


He Most Happy Who Such One Loves Best

by akathecentimetre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Multi, Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:38:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan keeps many secrets - a lover, a daughter, a rebellion. And he is determined to make good on them all, no matter what it takes. A fix-it AU which retains a lot of canon, starting during <i>Attack of the Clones.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _A/N: As much as I adore it, this fic completely ignores the Bail-Obi backstory that is set up in Karen Miller’s wonderful novel Wild Space – so the Coruscant bombing and their time on Zigoola don’t take place in this ‘verse._

*

Bail Organa first falls in love with Breha Antilles upon her first, last, and only requisite rejection.

“Thank the gods,” she’d said, giving him her first smile, the first time he’d seen her happy through months of negotiations, months of haggling and arranging and tepid-intentioned manipulation of them both, when he screwed up his courage enough to say that he found himself incapable of being the husband she had been promised. “I would have hated to break your heart.”

She had plans. She had beauty, and grace, and everything she would ever need without the burden of pretending she loved him, either. All she wanted was his friendship, the quiet, touching support of someone who _knew_ her and where and what she’d come from better than anyone – that, he was more than ready and eager to provide. That was what they could give each other, and so when Senator Bail Prestor Organa goes to Coruscant, never likely to see his wife for more than a few hours throughout his term, they are satisfied nonetheless.

Senator Bail Organa is a year into that first term when his wife’s dear friend, Amidala of Naboo, arrives on Coruscant. He is finally confident in a skin which demands far more of his mind and soul than anything he was confronted with on Alderaan, prickling to and glorying at his task, when he is introduced to his first Jedi.

Said Jedi don’t like him. The boy glowers; the man is polite, but suspicious. Bail’s pre-formed conceptions of their breed as out-of-touch, as distant, cold, aloof mediators of the galaxy’s worst tragedies, seem confirmed.

He has dinner with Padme, an experience he finds most gratifying for the praise and love they can speak of concerning Breha alone; the presence of the two Jedi in her antechamber, quietly picking at their own meals and discussing Bail cannot guess what, does not seem to bother _her_ in the slightest.

“You seem uncomfortable, Senator,” she says, as her service droids refill his wine. “I can ask our guests to leave us.”

“No, please – it would not do for me to deprive you of your protection so soon,” Bail protests, slightly nettled at the idea that he has allowed his discomfort to be noticed; Amidala is perceptive, however, so he will let his self-castigation slide. “I rather thought that it was you who did not want them here.”

“Oh, no,” she says, quickly shaking her head; there is real warmth in her smile, which surprises Bail. “To be sure, I cannot but object to the fact of their being here in the abstract – but these Jedi are my particular friends.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. I have known Padawan Skywalker since we were both children, and Knight Kenobi has been a steadfast ally and contact for many years.”

There, that is what Bail has missed – there are clues in those names, ones he had failed to remember, of histories deliberately kept murky and battles glossed over. “I must apologize for my impertinence – they aided you in restoring you to the throne of Naboo, I assume?”

“They did,” she confirms, and her smile falters; she has learned too well, Bail thinks, for someone so young, just how old sorrows and griefs can lend gravitas to one’s features. “And they lost much in the effort.”

Bail cannot say, as he and the Jedi exchange silent bows upon his departure, that he can take Amidala’s word to trust them – not yet. But the stories she tells make him wonder, amazed, at the power contained in the young man that was once a boy who blew up a droid control ship; and at the dignity of the copper-haired man who watches him so carefully, who lost a father, who carried his body silently to a pyre.

He’d never really thought that the Jedi could experience loss. All he’d ever read about them, in the children’s and history books of Alderaan, enshrines them into immortality – into litanies of names and strange precepts that seem deliberately opaque. He’d never seen scars on a Jedi before, as there are on Knight Kenobi’s hands; never thought they could lose sleep, as evidenced by the black circles under Padawan Skywalker’s eyes.

All that changes within a few swift, blinding, staggering weeks. The news of the existence of the Grand Army of the Republic is so appalling that Bail comes within minutes of resigning his position; only the quick intervention of the Chancellor, who, eagerly, wide-eyed and pale, offers him a place on the Security Council which will oversee the coming war, mollifies him. It takes everything he has not to be visibly angry, to remember the training of long years of court life and disciplined politesse and remind himself of his duty.

“ _You look tired, B,_ ” Breha says, her little, beautiful figure looking up at his face with the utmost concern from the commlink he keeps in his richly-furnished office. “ _If you choose to make this your fight, fight it well_.”

He does choose, and he stays, and a week after the first Battle of Geonosis – three days after he stands on a balcony and watches the Grand Army embarking for planets yet unknown, completely breathless with awed outrage – he is summoned, via the Chancellor’s office, to a meeting in a place he never thought he would ever go.

The Jedi Temple is – majestic. There is really no other word for it. Bail feels so immediately at home, surrounded by the sights, smells and sounds of water, greenery, of ancient statuary reaching up into dark skies, that he has to remind himself that he is not at home, in the comfort of his beloved Alderaan.

The Council Chamber, likewise, stuns him with its panoramas; but what is even more startling is the sight of Knight Kenobi sitting in one of the wide chairs, pale and tired, his cloaks piled around him as though to keep him warm.

“Knight Kenobi,” Bail says, and bows; there are a few other Jedi taking their seats, but he senses from the relative emptiness of the room that not all the Council is due to greet him (perhaps, indeed, they no longer can). “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Kenobi says, and then quickly shakes his head. “Forgive me. The circumstances – ”

“You are forgiven.”

“Thank you.” Kenobi looks up, a smile quirks his lips; he stands, slowly, briefly awkward, and returns Bail’s greeting bow. “You have not been introduced – Masters Yoda, Windu, Gallia – ”

The meeting is slow, inquisitorial, occasionally so much so that Bail thinks, sourly, that he has been right about the Jedi all along – he thinks that once, briefly, he sees Kenobi smiling behind his hand in the wake of one of these more venomous thoughts, which only irritates him further.

 _If you please_ , he thinks to himself, loudly, only afterwards realizing that he feels ridiculous for even assuming what he’s assuming. But it appears he is right, after all, because Kenobi’s smile quickly snaps into solemnity, and he is attentive to Bail’s answers for the rest of the interview – a jumbled mess of questions and proverbs the aim of which Bail cannot fathom. He is asked about Alderaan, about his background, about his political views – Master Windu in particular seems very concerned with his opinion on the separation of Senatorial powers.

It is Yoda, in the end, who hums and nods, bringing to a close all other whispers and mutters between those Jedi present. “Satisfied, we are,” the ancient Master rasps. “Our liaison between the Temple and the Senate you shall be, Prince Organa.”

Bail stares. “I – ” he starts, and has to pause to clear his throat. “I am not sure I understand this honor you do me.”

“Understand you shall,” Yoda says, with a smile that is grimly disturbing. “Master Kenobi your guide will be.”

With that, it seems the meeting is adjourned, for the Jedi present swiftly depart, quietly, with a sort of grace even Bail, connoisseur of the Alderaanian ball and ceremony for decades, finds unnatural. Left alone with Kenobi, he finds himself more confused than ever as a calm hand briefly touches his arm.

“Come, Senator. Walk with me.”

“I mistook your rank, Master Kenobi,” Bail starts, just for something to say, as they make their way to a balcony close by with yet another stunning vista over the city. “I did not realize you had been elevated to the Council.”

“It was a recent promotion, and one I did not seek,” Kenobi says, rubbing at his beard; there is something wryly humorous in his voice, though he still looks dead tired, and is listing, Bail realizes, slightly to one side as though nursing some injury. “Our losses on Geonosis…”

“Of course,” Bail murmurs respectfully, relieving the Jedi of the burden of explaining the pained look on his face. “Alderaan mourns with you.”

Kenobi looks at him surprised at that, as though it had not occurred to him that such consolation was merited, even embodied in such a hackneyed, common phrase. “Thank you.”

They part with the understanding that the Jedi hope (and indeed expect) Bail to be their representative and defender on the Senate floor, and – more precariously – their eyes and ears in the Chancellor’s office. Bail finds himself unsure, as he looks out across Coruscant that evening with the weight of his royal Alderaanian ring unusually heavy on his finger, of whether, in agreeing, he has tied himself in ethical knots; nonetheless, he appreciates the need, in these frantic times, for him to know as much as he can from as many sources as possible. And so he finishes his drink, tells himself again that Master Kenobi is not such a bad example of a Jedi after all, and goes to bed.

The next time he sees any Jedi is after the Battle of Christophsis, and they have all changed. Padawan Skywalker is now a knight, and seems to have taken on a tumultuous, powerful adulthood in an instant, an insolent, wonderfully fierce Togruta girl trailing at his side (when she is not springing ahead of him, that is). Master Kenobi, meanwhile, has shrugged on an energetic, cynical competence which Bail had glimpsed only briefly after Geonosis. It hits him only in retrospect, in fact, that this moment – at a party held by Senator Amidala, small, intimate, full of friendly laughter that wards away gathering storms – is the first in which he has seen his acquaintance (it would be inappropriate, still, to use the word ‘friend’) fully alive, healthy, determining his own destiny.

He asks one of his staff to procure him one of those old Alderaanian tomes he has been thinking about for weeks – the ones which detail, with a childlike wonder, the exploits of Jedi down the ages. He reads about the mysteries of the Force, about strength and compassion and tragedy. About the indiscriminate power of hatred and the terrible destruction of the Sith, the iron will of survival. Of auras, of trances, of visions, feats more properly called miracles.

“ _You’re awfully preoccupied tonight, B,_ ” Breha chides during one of their conversations not long after, a smile playing at her lips. “ _Is my conversation so dull?_ ”

“No – forgive me, my dear. A long day.”

“ _What’s his name?_ ”

She has asked the question before, and does it now with the same lilting, friendly tease in her voice, the same tone he has used with her, too, across the many years of their willing, sanctioned indiscretions. But this time, it seems, he takes a little too long to answer, and a genuine curiosity comes into her eyes as her face falls.

“I’m afraid it does not much matter,” he says, honestly. “He is promised elsewhere.” (To things, concepts, duties, worlds he cannot even imagine. How could one ever compete with the binding force of the universe?)

“ _Like that’s ever stopped you,_ ” Breha laughs, but still, her face is serious. “ _Keep me informed, B. I promised you an intact heart, and I intend to hold all others to that same standard._ ”

“You are a positive fiend,” he sighs, and catches the kiss she blows before ringing off.

The next time he sees Master Kenobi it is at the Temple, during a break between endless campaigns; he happens upon the Jedi conversing closely with his clone commander, a stern and competent man Bail has met and can only respect, and finds himself humbled by the seriousness of their expressions, the quick motions of hands over datapads which represent, no doubt, the next unfortunate planetary systems to be dragged into the ever-escalating conflict.

Kenobi catches sight of him, nods to Commander Cody, and comes towards him, one hand extended from his flowing robes. “Senator. My apologies for keeping you waiting.”

“Not at all, Master Kenobi. It is good to see you well.”

“I think we’re well beyond the point where you should have started calling me Obi-Wan, Senator,” Kenobi smiles, and Bail knows his handshake grips too hard, betrays too much tension, at the mere idea of this.

“Then you must return the favor, I’m afraid.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows rise, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. “Surely your protocol officer will object.”

“Oh, I haven’t had one of those for months. Two days on the Senate floor did the last one in.”

Kenobi laughs, an unexpectedly rich, quick sort of sound, and Bail thinks _Ah, there it is – my turning point, and I have run straight through it_.

They sit, and talk of the Jedi’s battle readiness for several hours; the privilege of understanding, and being trusted so completely with the details of the Order’s inner workings does not escape Bail, and so he commits as much as he can to memory, quietly commiserates with losses, promises a nuanced appreciation of the fact that the Jedi were never meant to be Generals, takes a keen interest in the news that with a few more resources, carefully placed, the Open Circle Fleet could punch right through the encirclement of several Confederate battle groups and regain control of one of the major trading routes recently lost.

With the resolution that he will introduce fresh bills onto the Senate floor to secure those resources the following day, Bail stands in the early evening with the help of one of Obi-Wan’s small hands, saber-calloused and cool, and finds himself, not for the first time, struck dumb in the presence of something so very – alien. He thinks, sometimes, recently, that when he meets different Jedi Knights he can see something of what, he has been told, makes each of them so different – their place in the Force, he has read, their constructed presentation of themselves as instruments of its grace.

He sees it now, around Obi-Wan: sees a steady, bright, warm light that speaks of calm and dignity and assurance.

Kenobi looks down at their entangled fingers, and a shadow of puzzlement passes across his face. “Senator?” he asks, quietly.

“Bail,” Bail says, automatically, and smiles; he drops Obi-Wan’s hand, puts his hands into his wide sleeves, gives his traditional Alderaanian bow. “I insist you return the honor you have given me.”

“Very well,” Obi-Wan says, and replies with a bow of his own – his smile is more circumspect than Bail has previously seen, but no less genuine. “Bail. Until we meet again.”

Said time is very short – too short, almost, for Bail to figure out exactly what he wants of their next meeting. He is at home in his Senatorial apartments, his staff all dismissed and even the droids shut down before he retires for the evening, when his door chimes, and he opens it to a Jedi Master who looks up at him with such concern that Bail wonders, momentarily, whether there has been some disaster.

“May I sit?” Kenobi asks, and does so without waiting for an answer; he politely refuses Bail’s offer of a drink, and perches unmoving on the edge of one of Bail’s sofas for a long moment before he speaks again.

“Senator,” he begins. “I have come to warn you that I cannot give you what you would ask for.”

Gods, but that’s direct. And Bail finds, strangely, that it seems perfectly appropriate – that he prefers this, in fact, to any other sort of rejection.

“I understand completely.”

“You do?” Obi-Wan, unusually, appears to be seeking reassurance for himself.

“Of course. I may be a stranger to the ways of the Jedi, but I know you are dedicated to higher planes than the one I would drag you to.”

“Ah.” Obi-Wan shakes his head, though he does not seem perturbed by the fact that Bail has, apparently, misunderstood him. “That is, in fact, a common misconception. A Jedi is perfectly free to do whatever they will with their body. And I can assure you, Senator, that you need not chastise yourself with the thought of being a corrupting influence – we do not disdain the merits of the physical.”

“Very open-minded of you,” Bail jokes, and, thankfully, it does not fall flat, as Obi-Wan’s eyes crease at their corners. “It occurs to me, Master Jedi, that you have not done enough to dissuade me as yet.”

“I am far more concerned with your feelings, Bail,” Obi-Wan says, quieter. “I have no intention of causing you pain by being unable to return them.”

Bail looks down into his drink, into shades of comforting amber. “May I ask why?”

A hand reaches across to touch his knee. “Because you do not deserve my indifference, Senator Organa,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “Because you are a good man who deserves someone whose love equals your own in every detail.”

“And you know me so well that you think you know what I need and desire, do you?”

He can hear and feel, rather than see, the frown on Kenobi’s face; his sudden discomfort at the thought that he might be mistaken. “Perhaps you should enlighten me.”

“This,” Bail says, and picks up Obi-Wan’s hand in his own, turns it, presses a kiss to a warm palm. “If you are willing.”

“Not unwilling,” Obi-Wan breathes. “Though my concerns remain unanswered.”

 _This is my answer_ , Bail thinks, and pulls Obi-Wan up until they are standing, until he can fold the Jedi up in his much-longer arms and kiss him, drink in that light.

The war goes on, and Bail finds that every moment he spends with Obi-Wan functions as a touchstone in his mind, bursts of light through a cloud-blanketed sky. Sometimes, selfishly, he fancies himself the sole possessor of Obi-Wan’s laughter – a foolish idea, no doubt, for General Kenobi has all the camaraderie of friends and worthy subordinates available to him in the field that he could ever need. But it still strikes him as something important that, sitting disheveled and half-undressed in Bail’s bed, Obi-Wan will laugh at something he has said, something he has done; that he has the power to take away a Jedi’s composure, to render Obi-Wan breathless and moaning; to wake up in the morning and roll into a sleepy, warm embrace.

Obi-Wan’s warning comes in handy in controlling his feelings, somewhat – more crucially in some times than in others. The news of the death of Jedi Master General Kenobi on the stinking battlefield of Jabiim has him calling Breha and being totally unable, for the first time in years, to speak. She talks of visiting him, but he persuades her not to, unwilling to subject her to his grief. He starts to think he is alright again just in time for the General to turn up not-dead, and when he is back in Bail’s office a week later he is so thin, his muscles turned into knots of wire, that Bail is again struck dumb.

“Are you alright?” Obi-Wan whispers to him in the dark, implying much more than he is asking; and Bail gasps out an assent, puts his hands on Obi-Wan’s hips, closes his eyes against the strangled puff of air that blows across his face as Obi-Wan sinks down onto him and shakes there.

Bail Organa is a politician. He knows, has learned very well, the art of patience. It has proved thus with all of his love affairs, too, and so it remains. The months of campaigning do not affect overmuch his much-examined feelings, or his comportment; he merely becomes more astute, he finds, in noticing the differences that have become apparent in between their assignations. Obi-Wan’s hair peppers ever-so-slightly white at his temples. Bail wakes on rainy mornings with a mysterious pain in his left knee; when he has to deal with more than two hours of paperwork at a time, a thudding headache starts up behind his eyes. He forgets the names of the campaigns stretching across the galaxy, sometimes – Obi-Wan himself confides to him, once, that his second battle on Geonosis sometimes presented itself in his mind as part and parcel of the first one, that it takes him too long to remember how, where, and when he received a particular wound.

The Chancellor congratulates Bail on his work with increasing frequency, but he does not take it as a compliment.

It seems a perfectly ordinary evening – in fact, a hopeful one, for Bail is one of the few to know that Obi-Wan is on his way to Utapau to, if all goes according to plan, end the war – when the first explosion rocks through the Senate sector, and Bail scrambles to his windows to see the billows of smoke erupting into the sky from the Temple, and something in his chest seizes tight.

He has seen the scars of battle on Obi-Wan’s skin. He has been threatened with words, with weapons in the abstract; seen holos and reports and endless number-crunching lists of the galactic dead – but nothing prepares him, nothing can, for the adrenaline that courses sickeningly through his veins when the clone troopers at the Temple tell him in no uncertain terms to leave.

When the Padawan – the _child_ – is gunned down before his eyes, it is all he can do to shout his dismay. Somewhere, as though at the edges of his vision, he senses a great light guttering, blackening, screaming out in agony.

Captain Antilles’ message comes not a moment too soon; setting out to meet him, Bail arrives at nearly the same moment as Yoda, who, for the first time, looks small in Bail’s eyes.

“Massacred, we are,” the ancient Master croaks, taking Bail’s hand. “Everywhere, the trap has sprung.”

Bail’s mouth runs dry. “Obi-Wan?”

“Not dead, he is,” Yoda says, a touch of strength returning to his voice. “All other Masters, yes – but his life I still sense. Contact him, you must.”

“I’ll try – ”

“You are not a man who merely tries,” Yoda says sharply, and before he stands again and sets off for the cockpit at a run, Bail feels the heavy expectation of that truth sink into his bones.

The message, in the end, comes to them – Obi-Wan is alive, Bail can see his pale face, can track him, can send him coordinates, can attempt to hold together some semblance of the life they once knew after all. But when Obi-Wan lands in their cargo bay and Bail rushes to meet him he is lurching, staggering, his tunics covered in dirt and what look like the aftermath of burns and blaster bolts, his face bloodlessly white.

“Are you hurt?” Bail demands, and grabs at his elbows, steadying him, though he can still feel tremors shaking through Obi-Wan as though from some external, shocking force.

“No, just cuts and – ” Obi-Wan breaks off, he chokes before being able to breathe in again and continuing. “Just cuts and bruises. Bail – ”

Bail’s support under his arms is not enough; Obi-Wan shudders, careens sideways, needs the flail of Bail’s hands to safely come to a stop in a heap against the durasteel wall of the hallway, and it is then that Bail understands just what that external force is: from across the galaxy, the death of each and every Jedi is blasting through Obi-Wan’s mind like a hurricane, keeping a monstrous tally of the destruction of an entire civilization.

“Fight it, you must,” Yoda says, suddenly at their side, his ancient face creased with sorrow. “Remember the now,” he adds, and puts a clawed hand on Bail’s knee, and Obi-Wan’s eyes look up at him, desperately, and slowly, ever so slowly, as Bail doesn’t dare to breathe, begin to clear.

The decision to go back to Coruscant strikes Bail as suicidal, but there is little he can do to persuade them otherwise. It is their first proper parting, then, when, as Yoda clambers awkwardly up into the Starfighter that has been fueled to carry them away, Obi-Wan clasps his hands around Bail’s and doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“You promised not to break my heart,” Bail says.

“And you promised you wouldn’t give it to me,” Obi-Wan sighs.

Bail contacts Mon Mothma, tries again to contact Padme, but cannot think more than a few days in the future, nor propose concrete plans even to survive for that long. Within hours, they arrive at Coruscant again, and he sends a message to the new Emperor’s office – one which promises his full support in this time of chaos. It makes his blood curdle and bile rise in his throat, even as he knows it will keep him alive and useful a little longer. The commlink in his office blinks with the receipt of desperate messages from Breha, but he cannot bring himself to answer her.

Yoda’s homing beacon flashes, and Bail gets into his sleek speeder and flies to him, takes him away from the burning wreck on the horizon that is the Temple. Bail feels as though entire planets, lives as brittle as grains of sand, are slipping through his fingers, never to be regained.

The wait, back on board the _Tantive IV_ , is agonizing. Yoda tells him nothing but that the Emperor is still alive, and Obi-Wan has been sent to kill Skywalker, and so he paces, and tells himself not to think, and paces some more. When the Naboo starcruiser emerges, so suddenly, from hyperspace not miles from them, he doesn’t even have it in him to be surprised – the sight of Padme’s slight form in Obi-Wan’s arms, so still, seems a macabre inevitability.

He has never seen Obi-Wan quite so broken, so bent, as when his forehead sinks to touch Padme’s unmoving shoulder, the med-droid temporarily occupied with its two squalling, fragile charges. He cannot watch, in fact, and so retreats, and when Obi-Wan eventually emerges, silently, into the star-lit conference room, neither of them have any idea what to say.

The last thing they decide upon, after the fate of two children is apportioned so casually (like his and Breha’s marriage, Bail finds himself thinking, and may the Gods give the infants as good luck) is that Captain Antilles can spare six hours before continuing on his way – or rather, it is Yoda who decides this, and who leaves them alone to be together in Bail’s quarters for a little over half of that time.

“I wish I could be there,” Obi-Wan mumbles into Bail’s shoulder, indifferently clean from the sonic fresher and half-dressed again in fresh tunics which have taken away, finally, the smell of charred, stinking lava. “To see you be a father.”

“You will be,” Bail says, and feels as though it takes on the weight of a promise as Obi-Wan, exhausted, smiles down at him in their half-light. “And they will know what you are to them.”

“Somehow, I hope not,” Obi-Wan sighs.

Bail kisses him, draws them down together, tells himself that they will not feel guilty over this moment – not now, not in the future. It’s easy to believe it, too, briefly, with Obi-Wan panting his name into his neck like a litany, like he’s teaching himself never to forget it.

Leia is sleeping soundly in the medbay, mere feet away from the coffin which will carry Padme back to Naboo, when Bail accompanies Obi-Wan into the hangar bay, where his two-person Starfighter is waiting; Captain Antilles’ crew are busily refueling, and Obi-Wan’s familiar, billowing cloak is draped, crumpled, across the co-pilot’s seat. Luke, in Obi-Wan’s arms, is half-awake and fussing, but doesn’t seem overly bothered by the din of engines revving and warming to their task.

“Just like his father,” Obi-Wan smiles, and Bail is astonished, as he always has been, by the equanimity with which he is able to speak of the damned.

Bail puts his hands on Obi-Wan’s shoulders, imagines for his own sake that he can feel skin and warmth through the layers of impersonal, thickening tunics. “Be safe, Master Kenobi.”

“And you, Senator.”

The ship is turning, already planning its vectored jump towards Naboo, and then Alderaan, when the Starfighter disappears into hyperspace.

Breha’s expression, when she has Leia in her arms, is one of the most beautiful things Bail has ever seen – akin to a sort of ecstasy, determination and love settling immediately and deeply into her brow.

And then she looks sideways at Bail, and takes a deep breath.

“What now?” she whispers.

It is a question which has infinite answers, and Bail, thinking of Yoda’s charge, fully intends to discover them all.

*

**TBC**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spenser's _Amoretti_ , Sonnet 59 (genderbent):
> 
> Thrise happie he, that is so well assured  
> Vnto his selfe and setled so in hart:  
> that nether will for better be allured,  
> ne feard with worse to any chaunce to start,  
> But like a steddy ship doth strongly part  
> the raging waues and keepes his course aright:  
> ne ought for tempest doth from it depart,  
> ne ought for fayrer weathers false delight.  
> Such selfe assurance need not feare the spight,  
> of grudging foes, ne fauour seek of friends:  
> but in the stay of his owne stedfast might,  
> nether to one his selfe nor other bends.  
> Most happy he that most assured doth rest,  
> but he most happy who such one loues best.


	2. Chapter 2

*

Looking back, Bail will remember these first few days after the Order’s fall as the product of some feverish, hallucinatory dream. Leia’s shrieks at night as she fusses and cries run together with the appalling horror of systems brought to heel, playing out across the HoloNet either in bloodless, sanctioned broadcasts or the jerky, illicit recordings of victims desperate to expose their slaughter. The joy of being with Breha, of curling together with their child (a child, gods, who would ever have thought them capable – but the surprised and genuine congratulations continue to pour in, so it seems they are considered worthy of such a gift) are punctured with moments when Bail’s breath stops of his own accord at the news that another Jedi Traitor has been hunted down in some distant corner of the galaxy, and they can only wait for a name.

On his fifth day on Alderaan – as he tests old alliances and contemplates new ones, plans very carefully the circumstances of his eventual return to Coruscant – he is approached by a deputation of Breha’s nobles who tell him, in no uncertain terms, that they disapprove with everything in their souls that can properly be called Alderaanian his decision to issue a statement of support to the then-Chancellor while the false Jedi rebellion was unfolding. They are intelligent, influential men and women all, and their protest wounds him deeply, bringing forth shame he has already been trying hard to repress; but he can sense their fear nonetheless, their deep anxieties, the weight of an entire planet behind them holding its collective breath.

It is Breha who, in these early days – as she has often, and, he suspects, will continue – rescues him from himself.

“Your concern is noted, Councillors,” she says sharply, regally presented in her throne room, her hands spread and calm at her sides; Bail thinks of Padme, of young queens grown mature before their time. “But I will not tolerate this castigation of Senator Organa’s actions. We live in extraordinarily dangerous times, and our survival as a people depends upon caution.”

“But the utter depravity of it, Your Majesty,” one of the nobles says, her pretty face drawn with the effects of sleepless nights. “To support even a single declaration of this tyrant throws Alderaan’s principles into disrepute – calls into question centuries of civilization and influence.”

Breha stands in a surge, a glorious wave of strength. “What will you do when the clone troopers march into your compound, Lady Brale?”

Brale’s face blanches. “I beg your pardon?”

“We are all serious people, are we not?” Breha continues, walking towards them with her hands folded neatly in front of her, a schoolmistress armed with both knowledge and punishment. “We understand very well the consequences of our actions, of our words, upon our citizens. Senator Organa may go back to the Imperial Senate and fight for the causes we believe in – justice, peace, the restoration of a democratic constitution, but _my_ concern is the preservation of Alderaan. Our principles,” she adds, softer, as she takes Brale’s hand, “will survive, my friends, but not if we do not survive with them. I ask for your patience as we determine the best course for us all.”

They leave pacified, but still clearly discontent, and when Breha turns back to Bail it is with a sigh.

“Well,” she says. “You’d better start introducing new bills to the Senate at a hell of a lick, B. I suspect they will be expecting a certain quota of reform measures per session.”

He marvels at her, and mourns that he has been away so long, to have missed seeing her like this.

They and a favored wetnurse take turns sitting up late with Leia, as even a Queen and a Senator need their rest; it is in one of these moments, in the half-light of their daughter’s cool, open-air room, that Bail looks up and, with a child gurgling sleepily in his arms, wants to weep at the idea that the universe could or should contain anything bigger, or more important, than this.

She is a beautiful little thing, all dark eyes and, already, a full head of soft hair. With her eyes barely open, she rolls from side to side as though desperate to get her tiny hands beneath her and go exploring. She is clad in soft silks, warm blankets, the worst danger she could experience an overly-chill breeze; somewhere, Bail knows, her copy is crying his incomprehension at the glare of a blinding, blazing sun, and already used to the scraping sensation of ever-present sand in his clothes.

He has so many avenues of guilt, now, that he careens wildly between wallowing in them and determining that he must forget them forever in order to stay sane.

It is with great reluctance that Bail tears himself away from all of this, though the fact that this true haven is open to him is some small consolation. His passage to Coruscant aboard the _Tantive IV_ is swift and quiet, precisely the environment he does and does not need to concentrate on the task that awaits him. In solitude, he can solidify in his mind (never on paper or on a datapad, for fear of discovery) his plans for reconnecting with what members of the Senate he trusts who are returning; it is also a time when he fails completely to avoid the stateroom he last shared with Obi-Wan before his departure, which reminds him of motives he had not meant to contemplate.

They have not even landed at his customary facility on Coruscant (the wreckage of the Temple looms in the distance, blackened and hollow) when they receive a message from the office of the Emperor himself, requesting the pleasure of Senator Organa’s presence at his earliest convenience – which means immediately, of course, and though it was expected the receipt of it stiffens Bail’s spine beyond what his body can reasonably bear.

The Senate building is dark, the main chamber apparently closed – for renovation or simply for good, Bail does not know, but the symbolism of its locked doors does not escape him. There are more guards, too, hundreds of them, all clad in red and wielding what Obi-Wan had once described to him as a lightsaber-resistant electrostaff, as though Sidious expects a Jedi to appear around every corner. He has maintained the Chancellor’s office as Bail remembers, though this, surely, is only temporary – an act of political symbolism to maintain a sense of continuity for as long as he needs before completing his transition to the aesthetics of tyranny.

 _Calm_ , Bail tells himself, remembering Obi-Wan’s clouded eyes clearing, and walks steadily forward.

There is a horrific apparition standing behind Sidious – a monstrous, black-clad figure, wheezing. For a long moment, Bail cannot be sure if it is organic or a mere droid.

“Senator Organa,” Sidious hisses, sounding pleased, and Bail thinks that even if he had not been witness to his works, the Sith would convince him of his evil by his looks and demeanor alone. “We are pleased to have the support of Alderaan during this difficult time.”

“I stand by my desire for a structured peace, which I can assure you is genuine,” Bail begins, and he guesses that the trace of a frown which sinks into Sidious’s ruined face is down to his conscious omitting of any sort of Imperial title in his address. “I have my concerns about the nature of this new order, however, which you are surely aware of.”

“And you intend to air these grievances, do you?”

“It is my duty to as an engaged member of the Senate.”

Sidious’s sigh is slow and peevish. “You have not met my apprentice,” he says, abruptly, turning slightly in his wide chair. “Darth Vader will be my constant companion in the administration of the Empire.”

“We have met.” The voice that emerges from the Thing is deep and terrifying, darkly furious. “You were always a nuisance then, too, Organa.”

It is almost genteel, the creeping sensation of no longer being able to breathe. For a moment, Bail nearly mistakes it for his own terror, so feebly kept at bay – but no, it is real, this is really his hand shooting up from his side and grabbing at his collar, his mouth working, his lungs frozen.

“My former master thought so highly of you,” Vader says, casually dismissive. “It seems fools come in pairs.”

As suddenly as it had come on, the crushing weight disappears from Bail’s chest; he staggers, takes in one deep breath, stares at Vader and struggles to make sure it is the only sign of weakness they will see from him, now or ever.

 _Dear Gods, we are lost_.

The Emperor is turning away from him, already preoccupied with some other business brought to him by one of his blood-garbed assistants. “We congratulate you on your recent joy,” he says, sounding bored. “Our best wishes to your wife.”

Bail’s step only strengthens enough to support him properly as he leaves, chillingly aware of the dead stare of black, armored eyes at his back. _So many warnings_ , he thinks, and all of them very clear – the enemy that they need to fight _knows_ them, knows their every weakness and fear, and will never be shy of using them.

Anakin Skywalker knows them, and he knows every method of their defeat.

He is met at the hangars which ring the building by a familiar form, hooded and cloaked, and for the first time, in the quiet maelstrom of his panic, he experiences a bright bolt of hope – it is Mon Mothma who peers out at him through the shadows of the great columns, her auburn hair dulled and her eyes blackened with fatigue but still _her_ nonetheless, upright and defiant. When she accompanies him onto his shuttle, it is with the press of quick hands and bright concern at his shortness of breath.

“What happened?” she asks, lowly, wary of the presence of Captain Antilles, whom Bail has decided to retain as his personal chief of staff – she is right to be careful, though he will soon tell her exactly whom she can and cannot trust when they are together. “Gods, they didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he croaks, and that, he can see, frightens her – they are Senators, after all, not creatures used to the idea of their persons, rather than their reputations or their thoughts, being offered up to harm. “But wait – wait, we will be alone soon.”

By the time they arrive at his office, which it feels like he has been absent from for months (it has been ten days, and the sense of dislocation is acute), Captain Antilles has murmured to him that the private, highly-encrypted commlink that Bail had asked to be set up for his use is operational, and that his residences have been thoroughly checked and cleaned of any spy devices known; the first thing Bail does upon entering is go to it and call Breha, and to his great relief, she answers immediately.

“ _You look terrible_ ,” she gasps. “ _Is it so very bad?_ ”

He tells them everything – that Anakin Skywalker is alive, and turned into everything they should fear and despise, and he sees Breha flinch at the mere thought that her daughter will exist in the same universe as the shadow that made her. He tells them of the Emperor’s personal threats (he does not speak of the presence of death he had felt creep over him, makes sure to keep this portion of his speech vague, to keep his rage at the idea of Breha and Leia in danger entirely to himself, private to the person who will have to stop it); he talks of the obvious militarization of the building that was once the Senate, and Mon Mothma chimes in with disgust on her face, saying that Sidious is already sending teams of pressganged workers into the Jedi Temple, making speeches about ‘reclaiming a polluted edifice’ that he will turn into the new, dark center of government once the hundreds of bodies of children and their doomed protectors have been quietly disposed of.

And then he says that he will go back to speak to the Emperor again, and Breha immediately begins to protest, and Mon Mothma’s mouth sets itself in a grim line.

“I must,” he insists, the germ of the idea he has been mulling over for days finally taking firm root in his mind. “I believe we can convince the Emperor of our powerlessness in a very particular way which can only be advantageous.”

“ _And what is that?_ ”

“Money,” Mon Mothma says, and Bail turns to her gratefully, glad to be so quickly understood. “You want him to buy your silence.”

“Not my total silence, I assure you,” Bail says, reaching out for her hand and squeezing it hard, to assure both of them of his dedication. “I will support what I can, as publicly as I dare. But we must play to Alderaan’s strengths, as we have been urged – I will tell him that we will not openly commit resources to his overthrow in return for a discretionary fund to be administered from Alderaan: humanitarian aid, most likely, which we will offer to the victims of the late war.”

“And if you manage to maintain private control over the fund and its records, it could be used for whatever you please,” Mon Mothma says slowly, her eyebrows rising. “As long as a portion of the money goes on what the Emperor thinks it’s for, the rest will be entirely yours to use as you see fit.”

“ _Why, B_ ,” Breha says, a hint of wondering laughter in her voice. “ _Do you really expect the Emperor to pay for his own downfall?_ ”

“In return for Alderaan’s quietude and moral leadership, I think he would do almost anything.”

“There are contacts already waiting,” Mon Mothma says quickly. “I have been offered troops, ships, fighters. All they need is the support to begin a proper process of consolidation and recruitment, as well as their supplies. If you can figure out how the fund might be run as you propose, we can begin now – and I will be bolder in the Senate if I can. Alderaan has much to lose – Chandrila less so, and Sidious already knows that I am far more independent of my homeworld than most of us.”

“ _I will do it_ ,” Breha says, and Bail looks down at her hologram in horrified astonishment. “ _The fund will bear the Queen’s name, and be run from my household_.”

“It puts you in too much danger,” he says immediately. “The consequences if you were discovered – ”

“ _You cannot run it from Coruscant, B_ ,” Breha interrupts, her expression firm. “ _You cannot run it at all, in fact. You are too close by._

 _“And besides_ ,” she adds, with a hint of a smile, “ _it will do us all good, I think. We will restore where we can, and build where we may, and our daughter will know that Alderaan did its very best as only it could_.”

The Emperor takes the proposal almost exactly as Bail hopes he would: with a hiss of displeasure, followed by a low, mocking laugh, the sound of a seething, wrecked little man who knows when he has been beaten, and beaten well. He might even admire Bail’s daring, Bail thinks, as, with a casual wave of a wrinkled hand, he is dismissed with the promise of several trillion credits to be delivered to Queen Breha Antilles Organa at the Empire’s convenience; bought and paid for, Bail sits in his chambers while Mon Mothma takes to the new Senate floor, her white dress a blinding contrast against the crushed black velvet all around her, and rails against the murder of democracy even as the HoloNet continues to roil with rumors and reports of crushed protests, of the death of cowering Jedi in the Outer Rim, of entire peoples enslaved by kingpins taking quick advantage of chaos.

In the few moments he can snatch for sleep, Bail dreams of Obi-Wan standing in the midst of a sandstorm, silently accepting the ribboning of flesh caused by sharp, tearing winds.

*

**TBC**

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Rex being incorporated into Leia’s household is borrowed (with permission) from the ever-lovely [norcumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/pseuds/norcumi) and [dogmatix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix); Cody was my addition because I couldn’t not!

*

Leia has just turned two, and Bail has just been re-elected Imperial Senator for Alderaan by a healthy margin, when he meets his first Rebel.

More has happened in those long months, of course, but his memory is punctuated by few things that really matter. Far more often than not, they are things to do with Leia: how she runs before she can walk (he’d heard it spoken of, but always thought it a joke until she stood on her little toddling legs and lurched, nearly flew, across a room into his arms); her first few words, reaching out for her mother and father; and, very quickly thereafter, the multi-syllabic babbling of a precocious talent who likes bright colors and the hours around sunrise, dragging them groggily out of their beds to show them flowers blooming in the palace gardens, already up to her ankles in mud by breakfast.

These times of bliss are, of course, always too short, and his inevitable return to Coruscant too fast-approaching. The only thing which keeps him there is knowing that Mon Mothma has information that he is eager to share in; that when he is not in the Senate, the Emperor is always far more likely to pass some winging new statute that restricts the rights of speech here, the rights of assembly there. During Bail’s last visit to Alderaan before Leia’s birthday, the Emperor takes advantage of his absence to pass a resolution placing a military governor in charge of all of Chandrila, and when Bail visits Mon Mothma upon his return he is greeted in her spacious quarters by the sight of a single packed trunk at her balcony, a fully-fueled speeder waiting in the shadow of her apartment building.

“Just in case,” she says, and the set of her jaw makes Bail clasp her hands and tell her yes, this is a prudent course of action, and that _no_ , under no circumstances should she ignore the better angels of her nature and choose martyrdom instead.

Life goes on, which in and of itself seems miraculous. Bail hears of a ship bought here, a rustbucket of a thing which will need substantial rebuilding – but Queen Breha’s staff deem it a potential flagship for her humanitarian efforts, and so the project goes quietly ahead at an unnamed facility on Yavin. A few months later, a second ship is bought, to be equipped with medical facilities; then, a third. Mon Mothma mentions no names; Breha knows many, Bail knows, but their conversations while he is away concern their daughter alone.

Darth Vader is nowhere to be found on Coruscant. It is said he is in the Outer Rim, chasing down the last of the Jedi; forsaking all attempts at righteousness, the Empire now merely says it is continuing its Purge. Bail asks Mon Mothma, only once, whether she is aware of any Jedi yet living, or who are fighting on their side; _A few_ , she says, haltingly, but she says it is naturally difficult to earn their trust, and most, if indeed they live, seem still to be in hiding.

So it is on this most recent visit, when Leia comes happily charging towards him as soon as he disembarks from the _Tantive IV_ and he swings her around in the half-light of dusk, that Bail Organa meets his first rebel – and they are not, in all truth, at all what he expected.

The figure which is waiting for him in his office stands military-straight when he comes in, still with Leia on his hip – though Bail halts in surprise, Leia has no such compunctions, and wriggles down out of his grasp to run up to the stranger, steady herself on his kneecap, and peer suspiciously up into his face.

“Who’re you?”

“Who, indeed,” Bail says, and looks behind him for his steward for some sort of explanation, but the man, usually so ever-present, seems to have chosen an inconvenient time to neglect his duty.

“Hey, squirt,” the clone says. He kneels down to Leia, pinches her nose, sets her giggling. “I should ask you the same thing.”

“I’m Leia! I _live_ here,” she scoffs, and looks around at Bail as though this is all his fault. “Are you here to see my daddy?”

“Yep.”

“Oh. Boring.”

“That’s affirm.”

Leia makes a face and runs out past Bail, already singing something in snatches under her breath; when the clone stands, it comes with a resumption of a bearing Bail finds very familiar, unbearably so. He walks past his visitor, sits behind his desk, wonders what he should say.

“What was your designation?”

“CT-7567, sir.”

“And now?”

The clone shrugs. He still has powerful shoulders, bleached-blond hair, lines creeping into his craggy face above his dusty grey jacket. “Just Rex, sir.”

“Who sent you?”

“Commander Ferus Olin, sir, on the suggestion of Senator Mon Mothma.”

Bail sits forward at that, eagerly, though there is something niggling at him that he knows he has forgotten about this man. “Olin, the former Jedi?”

“Yes, sir. He’s leading the initial push to create Outer Rim cells.”

Bail considers, drums his fingers, tries not to let his feelings about the fact that there are Jedi, even former Jedi, still alive show too clearly on his face. Two years is a very long time without news. “And why, exactly, were you sent?”

“It was thought you and other Alliance leaders might need personal protection, sir. I would be just one contact in your network, of course, but my training and that of my brothers supersedes that of anyone you’ll currently find in Palpatine’s army.”

“I don’t need protection.”

“Nevertheless, sir.”

Bail finds himself smiling; he likes this man, he realizes, as though he’s known him a long time. Perhaps he has, and has forgotten –

His smile fades.

“You were Skywalker’s, weren’t you,” he murmurs.

Rex is a man of gravitas as well as humor, he can tell; the shift in the clone’s face is too significant to think otherwise. “Yes, sir.”

“Tell me why I should trust you.”

Rex takes a deep breath. “Because I never killed a Jedi, sir, and I know that that means something to you.”

They talk long into the night, walking back and forth across the balcony of Bail’s office, in the gardens, along long lines of sleek, beautiful speeders kept in the palace hangars. Rex had deserted from the Grand Army immediately upon the receipt of Order 66, it emerges; separated from Skywalker, on leave to recuperate from a battlefield injury, he had not seen his superior’s descent into madness, though there is something in his speech that denotes a weary guilt, as though he wishes he had indeed been there, as though he could have done something.

He takes out a tiny piece of metal that hangs around his neck on a thin chain, once; hefts the miniscule weight of it in his hand before he pulls the chain over his head and holds it out to Bail. It’s such a small thing, the control chip; so easily overlooked, the instrument of the Jedi’s fall.

“Hurt like a sonofabitch,” Rex says, only remembering to look apologetic for his language a long moment later. “Kept whispering things to me, y’know? Telling me where to find them, how to kill ‘em. I told it no, and bled out of my ears for days. Killed a lot of us outright, refusing – blew up their heads like a bomb.”

The clones who are still in the Army have all been de-chipped, Bail learns – they had to be when they insisted, after all, or the Emperor would have risked a mutiny on a scale the galaxy had never before seen. It makes sudden sense of Palpatine’s recent efforts to completely remake what is left of his massive fighting forces – calls for volunteers, the establishment of dozens of new military academies, the networks of outright nepotism and the corrupt purchase of commissions rife on Coruscant. He wants the clones out, and the ones left are disappearing, are dying, are drowning their sorrows until they lose all usefulness.

“I don’t want you here to protect me,” Bail says abruptly, near dawn, when the sky is lightening and they have run out of things past to speak about. “But I would be honored if you kept my daughter safe.”

“She’s a pistol,” Rex says, his face cracking open in a smile. “If you’re sure you can handle yourself on Coruscant, sir – ”

“I can. And you would be more readily recognized there, in any case.”

“True.” Rex looks down at the ground, shifts his weight, seems suddenly nervous. “Before I start, though, sir – I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“Name it.”

“One of my brothers, still in the service – I want to get him out. He’s a man of purpose, and he’s lost it, and I think the Alliance needs him – we need him. One of us could be here for Leia, the other out in the field… whatever they need of us, if you get my drift.”

“What help of mine do you need?”

“Not your help, sir,” Rex says, quieter, still staring at the ground. “Your permission.”

“What for?”

“Because you know him, sir. And I don’t – know if you’d want him here, because he wasn’t as lucky as me.”

Bail remembers a stern, kind face, quick hands, remembers _why_ he’d seen them – because of that day in the Temple, those commlink conversations late at night, that ever-present shadow at Obi-Wan’s side, the one who aimed a cannon into the sky on Utapau.

“You are speaking of Commander Cody.”

“Yeah.” Rex seems thoroughly miserable, now, as though he’s spent the whole night keeping unwanted thoughts at bay, and has finally failed. “It’s eaten him up, sir. If he’d known for a _second_ what he was doing, he’s been de-chipped and all but – I mean, fuck, he doesn’t even know General Kenobi’s _alive –_ ”

Bail turns, grabs Rex’s arm. “How do _you_ know?”

If he were not a guest in Bail’s home, Bail suspects Rex would bodily pick him up and throw him into the nearest hedge for daring to touch him. “Saw him last month, sir – just a quick communications drop on Tatooine. I – ”

He stops, then, and stares wide-eyed at Bail, and, finally, lets out a quick, shocked laugh. “Shit,” he begins again. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize you were being kept this out of the loop.”

“Yes, well,” Bail says, letting his hand drop from Rex’s person and resolutely telling his rising jealousy to do the same. “The leaders of the Alliance are not privy to my reasons for wanting to know how he is.”

It takes Rex a moment, but when he does figure it out he looks nothing less than thunderstruck. “ _Fuck_ ,” he blurts.

“Quite.” Bail lets silence fall, takes a moment to recompose himself, to wrap his sleeves closer around him to ward off the morning chill. “You may find Commander Cody,” he says, eventually. “If he is willing, tell him he will be welcome here.”

Rex’s shoulders sag, then dip further as he gives a quick, awkward bow. “Thank you, sir.”

“We did you such great harm,” Bail calls after him, as he is on his way out of the gardens. “What are we to do about it?”

Rex turns back; he is smiling, unbelievably, his arms spread at his sides. “That’s your call, sir,” he says. “But at the time, we were who we were. And no one will _ever_ shame us for that.”

It is nearly a month before Bail sees Rex again; in that time, he spends three weeks on Coruscant and only a few days with his family, since there is the matter of a bill to hold up in the Senate, one which would give all powers of troop deployment to the Emperor, destroying a fragile coalition Bail, Mon Mothma, and others have maintained to safeguard the Senate’s mostly-symbolic, but still important task of being the body to officially sanction war against any group or planetary system. Their efforts are in vain; the bill is carried by a hefty majority, leaving Mon Mothma looking more and more like she is on the verge of breaking into tears on a daily basis, and when Bail goes home to recuperate what is left of his mental faculties he arrives in the dead of night, and has nearly forgotten all about his expected visitors until he descends the ramp of his diplomatic ship and finds the two of them waiting for him on the platform.

Cody is just as he remembers, if severely downcast; what competence the clone exuded in his previous life has been stripped away, leaving little behind but a muscular body stooped in Rex’s coat, still wearing most of the underarmor of the GA underneath it. Bail nods to them both, and they follow behind him silently until they reach his office; desperate for a bed to sleep in, for a long moment, Bail does not know what to say.

“You encountered no difficulties?” he asks, finally, stifling a yawn.

“None, sir.” It is Rex who speaks, since Cody does not seem inclined to. “When we got off Corellia they hadn’t even noticed that he’d gone AWOL.”

“I was on leave, sir,” Cody says, then, hoarsely, and Bail, putting two and two together, can imagine, suddenly and with perfect clarity, what he might have been getting up to on that particular planet. Their brandy, after all, is supposed to help the most with the stubborn act of forgetting.

Bail looks at Rex. “Have you not told him?”

Rex’s smile is gentle, understanding, as though he is perfectly happy to claim only the role of midwife to what is about to happen. “I thought I’d let you do the honors, sir.”

Bail looks at Cody’s bowed head, at the exhaustion of him, and clears his throat. “No doubt Rex has explained his proposed system of work to you, Commander,” he begins. “I thought that perhaps he could stay here on Alderaan, at first, and your first task could be to act as my messenger to Tatooine. My first letter to Master Kenobi is long overdue.”

There, it happens – Cody’s head shoots up, his eyes wide. “To who, sir?”

“Master Kenobi. He is on Tatooine.”

Cody’s throat hitches; his fist clenches at his sternum. “Would you excuse me, sir?” he asks, and at Bail’s nod he makes a rapid about-face and goes out onto Bail’s balcony with Rex hurrying worriedly in his wake. Absurdly, exhausted as he is, Bail’s first thought when he hears the unmistakable sounds of someone being violently sick over the railing are that the gardeners, who are due to work on the beds of sunflowers below them in the morning, will put up a hell of a ruckus.

He hauls himself out of his chair, joins them outside, puts a hand next to Rex’s on Cody’s heaving, shuddering back.

“I have been persuaded that you are not in need of forgiveness, Commander,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “But you have mine nonetheless, if it means something to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cody pants, wiping at his mouth. “I knew that you and the General – I mean, I never thought you’d – ”

“You have it,” Bail says, more firmly, and then he nods at Rex before taking a step back. “I need to sleep,” he explains, honestly, at Rex’s quizzical look. “You can make your arrangements in the morning.”

He goes to bed, and lies awake for a while longer, hope festering in his heart.

In the end, it is two more months before Cody returns, having as he does to make painstaking, careful plans to make sure he is not followed, hopping from system to system on his way to the Outer Rim and around, rather than through, any Imperial encirclements if he can help it. In the meantime, Leia takes to Rex like a fish to water, using his big frame as a mountain to climb, practically inviting the stern tickling of his fingers, listening spellbound to his more colorful war stories well past her bedtime (Bail excuses him this indiscretion, since the stories are exceptionally well-told and she is unlikely to understand exactly what it is he’s talking about at her age, in any case).

Breha, too, likes him very much, not least because he is able to distract Leia’s attention away from her when she is too exhausted, after long days of Council meetings and the extra clandestine work of the Alliance, to do justice to her daughter. There are few people in the galaxy who can make Breha break into true, rather than merely diplomatic, laughter – Bail is one, Padme had been another, Leia will forever be a third. Rex, it seems, will be her fourth, and the clone’s companionship as an adult, for both of them, makes Bail’s absences that much more bearable again. Quickly, almost disturbingly so, they cannot make their way through their days without his steady, provoking presence.

Bail sends only one thing with Cody, not trusting himself to properly compose a message – an ancient ring belonging to his family which he has worn for most of his life. It carries memories with it, memories of Obi-Wan’s fingers tracing the bright blue stone and asking where it had come from, and what it meant; memories of it brushing Obi-Wan’s cheek in sleep. Bail’s hand feels naked without it, but it is a loss which, if it reaches its destination, he can bear in the face of anything.

Cody returns a new man. His back is straight, his eyes clear and thoughtful as they had ever been; he has picked up new clothes, finally, on his way, and regained that quiet nobility of bearing which makes the scar on his face seem a badge of honor rather than a mark of defeat. There is sand under his fingernails as he hands Bail his precious burden – a neatly folded few sheets of flimiplast with a printed holo inside, of a little boy with sun-kissed hair grinning, one tiny hand shading his eyes as he stands at the side of a speeder in a busy desert town – a market day, perhaps? – and at his side, what must be Obi-Wan looking back, hooded but smiling.

 _Bail_ , the letter reads –

_Even at this distance, you work miracles. Your messengers will serve you well._

_I have seen you and your family on the HoloNet – oh, yes, we get it even out here on occasion, you know. I congratulate you on your daughter. O. and B. have found their feet in that regard as well, though I am not often welcome in their home._

_I acknowledge receipt of your gift. I will cherish it._

_Affectionately Yours, in all respects,_

_Ben._

So empty, so careful, so anodyne, and yet every word of it thuds through Bail as though they have been spoken in this room, now, on Alderaan, by a voice he has been desperate to hear for two years.

“He looked well?” he asks, once he has found his own voice.

“As well as can be expected, sir. He mentioned that he planned to travel off-planet soon, perhaps pick up a mission or two for the Alliance.”

Bail looks up hurriedly. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t mention anything of why he was on Tatooine to me – we met in town because he didn’t want me to be followed out to wherever it is he is living.”

Bail looks at the letter again, reads it two or three times more, quickly; then, again, at the holo. “Who took this?”

“Sir?”

“Obi-Wan obviously didn’t take it – he’s in it. You met no one else while you were there?”

“No, sir.”

Cody leaves Bail sitting alone in semi-darkness, staring at the damn holo – and, strangely, not at all welcome, he feels something like unease stir in his chest.

*

**TBC**

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts of this chapter brought to you by: WHAT THE HELL LUCAS HOW IS THE DEATH STAR HALF-BUILT AT THE END OF ROTS AND THEN IT APPARENTLY TAKES TWENTY YEARS TO FINISH IT: Ugh Now I Have To Fix That Too Don’t I, A Novel By Me.

*

By the time Leia is three years old, Bail is starting to wonder whether he is still useful to anyone or anything.

This is not so much the result of censure from others; most of the blame for his inactivity, he thinks, lies squarely on his own shoulders. Though he seems to work from morning ‘til night when on Coruscant, it is never enough; though he goes home to Alderaan as frequently as he can, every casual story of what he has missed of Leia and of Breha’s work while he is away eats away at his confidence in being a present father. More often than not, it is Rex who puts his daughter to sleep, and though he flatters himself that he is above jealousy for a problem that is of his own making, Bail cannot help but wonder whether he is making grave mistakes, ones which will provide passive advantages to others. He hates that when he is on the Senate floor, the Emperor’s box sits stubbornly empty and yet his name serves as impetus enough to wreck all of Bail’s plans; why he thinks he needs the validation of Palpatine’s presence he does not know, and indeed the thought that he measures his worth by the inclinations of a dictator disgusts him.

The Alliance, at least, goes on building itself without him, which is something to celebrate. They have outposts or cells in dozens of systems – the fleet grows month by month, and is in fact so large that it has had to be split up into several battle-ready groups, each with its military capabilities still lying dormant, each of its holds still full of medical and food supplies being sent around the galaxy in the name of Queen Organa. Just before Leia’s third birthday, the largest of their flagships takes delivery of a motley shipment of second-hand X-wing fighters. There are other smaller ships too, Bail knows, the outcome of tense negotiations he and Mon Mothma have finally, secretly concluded between Alderaan, Chandrila (or what is left of Chandrila that is not beneath its imposed governor’s thumb) and Corellia – dozens of smugglers, for a high price, for their silence must be bought as well as their vessels, are now running blockades for the Alliance.

Bail has an unexpected chance to meet some of these waifs, once – as they continually depart and return on Alliance business, after all, Rex and Cody have found ample opportunity to mix with all levels of Alliance personnel. (Leia understands their sameness, but not their exact relationship: upon seeing the two of them together for the first time, she’d merely hummed, frowned, and grabbed at Cody’s face before insisting that they couldn’t be the same person. Rex she treats with an unmediated exuberance; she is more respectful of Cody but the two of them together are quiet intellectual terrors, discussing faux matters of state far into the night and setting Bail and Breha impossible tongue-twisters or mental puzzles over meals.)

At any rate, Rex arrives back from one of his trips in a state of roaring laughter, and says between sniggers that it’s all the fault of the kids who had given him a ride back; chafing at the thought of another long return trip to Coruscant and desperate for some sort of novelty, Bail follows him back to Aldera’s main spaceport, with a wriggling, excited Leia powering along at his side, only to find himself staring in mute astonishment at one of the most decrepit spaceships he has ever seen.

“You came back in _that?_ You’re braver than I thought. Or rather – more foolish. Aren’t you supposed to _not_ be risking your life while in my service, Rex?”

“’Scuse me?” says an insolent voice, and good gods, the two boys who come sauntering down the ship’s gangway, armed to the teeth, cannot be more than fifteen years old – and yet one of them wears Corellian Bloodstripes, and the other has a ravenous, pinched look to him which reminds Bail of unfortunates he had occasionally come into contact with on Coruscant: fallen gamblers, penniless nobles, mercenaries with nothing to lose.

“What’s he saying about the _Falcon?_ ” says the Corellian boy, and, with a sucking sound, he spits at Rex’s feet. “We ain’t been paid yet, mister. An apology just got added to our fee.”

“Spitting is rude,” Leia says, with an audible sniff. She’s hanging on to Bail’s hand like a lifeline, but her eyes are wide as she looks the two boys up and down, and Bail, a sigh rising up his throat, knows hero worship when he sees it.

“Yeah?” The Corellian boy leans down, grins filthily. “I’ll teach you how if you wanna.”

“No.” Leia stops, tilts her head, and reconsiders. “Yes.”

“That’s quite enough from you, young lady,” Rex says sternly, and, putting both hands on Leia’s shoulders, steers her in the opposite direction of the hulking ship while the young pilots snicker. “Here, sir,” he says, on his way, as Leia starts volubly complaining – he puts a bag into Bail’s hand, no doubt the credits the strangers are expecting. “Give it to the Wookiee – he’ll know what to do with it, but he doesn’t like the sight of me much.”

“Why’s that?”

“He was on Kashyyyk,” Rex says simply, and tows Leia off, eventually tossing her up over his shoulder, which just provokes a lot of high-pitched screeching.

Bail turns back, marveling, and finds himself face-to-face with the two boys, who are eyeing the little bundle of credits hungrily; luckily for Bail, who is starting to think he’s due to be stabbed and left for dead, a low, snuffling call echoes out behind them, and the older boy turns away with a huff. “Aw, man, Chewie,” he complains. “You never let us do anything fun!”

“What are your names?” Bail asks, attempting to regain some control over the situation as an enormous Wookiee wearing a bandolier stumps his way out of the ship.

“Han Solo.”

“Lando Calrissian. This’s my ship.”

“Your ship, my ass.”

“ _I_ fucking won it, Solo. You’re a passenger.”

“You barely know how to engage the fucking hyperdrive!”

Bail looks up at the Wookiee, who seems to have about the same estimation of the boys as Rex does – an exasperated fondness, with a healthy dose of extra annoyance. He warbles something, managing to sound stern, and the boys set off, still bickering, having apparently forgotten all about Bail – somewhat to his relief, in fact.

Bail hands over the money; the Wookiee’s eyes are deep and calm, speaking to a great age, and Bail cannot think what to say.

“We thank you for your service,” he eventually gets out, stiffly, knowing that these words are not enough, but that they will mean more, at least, to this giant alien than they ever could to the wayward boys at their age, no matter what they might have seen. The Wookiee inclines his head, rumbles something that Bail thinks is wordless, and he watches the strange ship roar off into bright, clear skies, adding another casualty to his mental list of those who have been sorely affected by the galaxy’s ruin.

Not long after, several things seem to happen at once, jolting Bail firmly out of his self-inflicted complacency.

The first is that, for several weeks, the HoloNet begins to report, in its smallest corners, in its most out-of-the-way communities and channels, on the exploits of a small band of rebels working their way through Huttese space who are led by an unnamed guerilla. There are rumors that it is a Jedi of some repute. Each new report leads to a sleepless night in Aldera; not just for the fear that Obi-Wan is exposing himself, but at the strange, foreign, incomprehensible idea that he is not alone, or fearing that some catastrophe has occurred – for surely he would not leave Luke alone and unprotected on Tatooine. Why Bail loses sleep over this in particular, he cannot define even to himself.

(Cody is away during this time; a few weeks after the reports subside back into the grey space from which they sprung, and after everything has changed, he returns from Bail knows-not-where with a wondering smile on his face, and he looks upon Leia more fondly than ever. Bail doesn’t know what he would even ask to evoke the answers he seeks.)

The second, far more tangible and infinitely more terrifying when he fully understands its implications, comes when Mon Mothma arrives at Alderaan unannounced, in the middle of the night, waking him and Breha and barely stopping to sit down before she presents them with a single datapad, old and battered, on which the technical drawing for a space station slowly revolves.

“It’s the size of a _planet_ ,” she whispers, and if that isn’t enough to be getting on with Bail doesn’t know what is. It is half-built, Mon Mothma says, drifting somewhere in no-man’s space beyond the Moddell Sector; it will be hyperspace-capable in a year, and its first, devastating weapons systems are due to come on line a year after that.

Suddenly, they have less than twenty-four months to win back the universe.

Mon Mothma got the plans from agents on Chandrila; they are dead, now, she says, a tremor in her voice, and Chandrila’s last threads of control are to be taken away from its people – a warrant has been issued for her arrest. It is time, at last, for her to declare herself the Rebellion’s public face, and she is ready to do it; before dawn, she is on her way again, sent with their firm support, their love, and the hurried clasp of hands and arms in front of a dilapidated ship due to whisk her away.

“It was only a matter of time,” Breha sighs, but she doesn’t seem comforted by this reassurance; taking her in his arms, Bail thinks that this, this, at least, is something he can do, and holds her while she weeps.

In the whirlwind of these fresh disasters, Bail lives on Coruscant for two months at a stretch, reinforcing his positions where he can, stalling any attempt to summon him before the Emperor if he is able. He quashes rumors that Queen Organa’s humanitarian efforts are to be investigated before some fool can assume they are fact and move to make them a reality; if anyone asks about Mon Mothma’s whereabouts he can, quite honestly, claim ignorance, and does so frequently. With Darth Vader engaged in chasing down rumors of a Rebel fleet (he will find nothing, merely the past evidence of good works done and a newly-defiant, quiet rage in the eyes of every citizen of Duros), Bail escapes at the end of his latest session with the tentative hope that he has done enough for the time being to shore up each of them.

It is midsummer on Alderaan, and Leia and Breha are due back any moment from their customary seasonal retreat in the mountains, to a palace Bail remembers fondly from his own childhood; reclining in his private staterooms as night begins to fall, for the briefest of moments he has no worries whatsoever.

And then there is a clatter from his balcony, and a voice he knows too well says “Hello, Bail,” and he forgets how to breathe.

He is so recognizable as he perches there on Bail’s railing – his hair sun-bleached and shaggy to be sure, his familiar tunics missing in favor of sand-blasted brown leather. His lightsaber is gone, replaced by a shockingly large blaster strapped to his back, practically a rifle; but the rest of him is the same, lithe, bright-eyed, Bail’s ring snugly on the fourth finger of his left hand.

Bail stares, and looks his fill, and tries to speak, and fails. “I thought you hated blasters,” he says, weakly, on his second attempt.

Obi-Wan laughs, and it’s as if they have never been away from each other, though he sounds tired, so very tired. “I do,” he says, and hops down from the railing, hauling the strap of the rifle over his shoulders so he can set it aside. “It’s positively barbaric. Then again, a lightsaber is rather too conspicuous these days.”

Bail stands, pulls Obi-Wan into his arms, takes a moment to soak in the heat of him, sun-warmed and quick-pulsed. “When did you – ”

“This morning. I’ve just spent a week running a guerilla war on Rodia. I can’t say I’d missed it.”

“How did you get up there?” Bail asks, bewildered, and Obi-Wan puts his forehead on Bail’s shoulder and laughs again – this time there is no mistaking the sagging in his body, the complete and utter trust which is telling him he can fall asleep in Bail’s company and – perhaps for the first time in years, Bail realizes – rest his fill.

“Jedi, Bail. I jumped.”

“Some jump,” Bail says faintly, and takes Obi-Wan’s hand; his bedroom is mere steps away, and the noise Obi-Wan makes when he sees the bed itself makes Bail want to proclaim the fact of _them_ to the entire galaxy, Emperor be damned.

“You’re tired,” Bail murmurs, and Obi-Wan’s assent is to start stripping out of his leathers and boots, leaving them in bedraggled little piles as he makes his way towards his rest. “Obi-Wan – Luke, is he – ”

“He’s safe, Bail,” Obi-Wan says, taking a moment to turn back even as his eyes are slipping closed, his wiry grip strong around Bail’s fingers. “I promise.”

“It’s just that – ” Gods, Bail _knows_ this isn’t the right time, knows that his motives are not pure, but he can’t help it, the compulsion towards certainty (no matter how much it may hurt him) is too strong. “Surely you can’t think it’s appropriate to leave him alone in Owen and Beru’s care.”

“Not alone,” Obi-Wan mumbles, and Bail thinks he can feel the exact point in the metaphysical muscle where his heart begins to tear.

“Cody is with the fleet and Rex is here, Obi-Wan. Who is with Luke?”

Obi-Wan’s head hits the pillow, and Bail cannot help but sit beside him; Obi-Wan’s hand finds his cheek, slides limply down his chest.

“Luke is protected by a force more powerful than any other in the universe, Bail,” he mumbles, already half-dead to the world.

“And what’s that?”

“A mother,” Obi-Wan sighs, and is asleep before the end of the word passes his lips.

Bail sits stock still, stares into the darkness, and knows he himself will not be able to sleep.

*

**TBC**

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring an imaginary solo version (for tenor voice) of John Farmer’s ‘[A little pretty bonny lass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCoybgtZYsA)’ ; also references [a lovely sketch](http://dyingsighs.tumblr.com/post/125003663644/handing-leia-over-to-bail-a-thing-in-my-sketch) by [dyingsighs](http://dyingsighs.tumblr.com/)/[mosmorde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mosmorde).

*

Bail is awake long into the night, turning Obi-Wan’s words over and over in his mind.

It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to believe what has been implied – rather that he cannot believe that it could have been kept secret. He was _there_ , for gods’ sake – he had seen what was left of her, what little she had left, what her final sacrifice, her final gift, had been. He has seen her every day, in Leia’s chatty, expressive eyes, and known that she was gone.

The idea of Padme Amidala alive, therefore, means many things. It means the Alliance has a potential leader stronger and more inspirational than he, Mon Mothma, or Breha could ever be. It means Darth Vader can count one fewer death on his fingers, and that his rage will be all-overwhelming, torrential, unpredictable.

It means that Leia has two mothers, and the thought of losing her is too much, in the darkness and closeness of night, for Bail to bear.

He looks down at Obi-Wan, and remembers a crumpled cloak in the co-pilot seat of the Starfighter which took him away, years ago. Was Padme underneath it? Was it his doing?

The hows of the secret circle through Bail’s mind for hours; he dares not venture close to the question of why.

Unwilling and indeed unable to wake Obi-Wan, for it is clear his sleep is deep and not meant to be disturbed, Bail eventually undresses and slips in beside him, and must fall finally doze off himself for a time, because when he next becomes aware of himself it is dawn, the air quiet and still, and Obi-Wan is looking at him through half-open eyes. In the sunrise, every harsh edge of him has softened, his hair turned golden; his forehead presses to Bail’s as he rolls slowly over onto him, breathes calmly into Bail’s neck.

“Bail,” he whispers, and Bail surges up against him, because gods, he has been waiting (he realizes) so long for this – for so long he has _wanted_ , and lacked, and it is all going to his head: his hand at the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, the other at his waist and then lower, mapping out every inch of him, relearning what he tastes like (tea, he remembers, always bloody tea, and now with the addition of salt and sand).

He cannot contain himself for long, after so much time – he is barely inside Obi-Wan when he comes, groaning, wrapping up whatever he can reach in his arms, and Obi-Wan is pliant against him, slowly rocking, panting, until his eyes roll back and he buries his mouth in the crook of Bail’s shoulder. His teeth are still sharp.

They lie that way for a while longer, with Bail now much more inclined to find some sleep of his own, but eventually it is Obi-Wan who stirs and sighs, who props himself on his elbows, rubs briefly at his beard in thought (how Bail had missed that strange tic, so common and yet so unique) before he traces Bail’s cheekbones with his thumbs.

“You have questions for me.”

Bail props an arm underneath his head, lets his hand ball itself into a loose fist. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” Obi-Wan is smiling, but there is little mirth in his teasing.

“Senator Amidala.”

“She no longer exists.” Obi-Wan blinks, then, and looks away, runs a hand through his hair again. “No – forgive me. I should not play semantic games, not with you.”

“How very kind of you,” Bail says dryly.

“She has abjured all titles,” Obi-Wan says, quieter, his eyes lowered, full of sadness. “The woman who died of a broken heart on board your ship was the Senator; now she is only Padme.”

It is a long story, told haltingly, full of strange twists and turns. The first being her decision to ‘die’ in the first place – tricking all but Obi-Wan, for even Yoda had not been privy to the decision to send only an empty coffin to Naboo, which was then protected by a final, desperate act of duty by one of her most trusted handmaidens, holding her breath during the interminable procession, waiting for hours inside the tomb until it was safe for her to vanish. It was Obi-Wan who shielded her presence in the Force even from the last remaining Grand Master; Obi-Wan who took her to a desolate hut on Tatooine, Obi-Wan who asked her if she wanted to look at her son before he was given away (the answer, at first, was no). It was Obi-Wan who painstakingly made sure she ate, in those first several long months; Obi-Wan who spent years talking into thin air, never expecting a response; who watched her walk slowly along the tops of dunes, huddled into herself, staring into the double suns as though she wished to go blind.

It runs counter to everything Bail would have expected. He would have imagined Padme with a blaster firm in her fists, quietly building an Alliance cell on Naboo (there _is_ one there, come to think of it, but he has no reason to believe they are aware of her still being among the living); he would have imagined her laughing, taking delight in her son, asking for news of her daughter – not, as Obi-Wan describes, wandering in the Wastes for days until the Lars farm came just into view on the horizon, and then turning back.

But then he remembers the terror of Vader’s presence, and the body count he left behind, and how invested she had been in _what_ had been – and, somehow, it seems incredible that she is alive at all, that she breathes the galaxy’s polluted air and it does not poison her.

“You know about Anakin,” he says, not quite asking a question, and Obi-Wan goes very still; the nod he gets in return is all, he suspects, that he will get, and he pulls Obi-Wan closer in apology, running soothing hands down his back. “What now, for her?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan sighs. A smile crosses his lips, then, and a chuckle. “Luke calls me his Uncle, and her his Aunt. Do you know – I don’t think she will ever correct him. She aches for him, and yet she thinks her touch would destroy him.”

“She should see Leia. She wouldn’t be able to get away with that here.”

“No doubt,” Obi-Wan smiles, and Bail kisses him, drinks him in; it is fully light, now, as he pushes Obi-Wan gently back into the pillows and strokes his way slowly down his chest, and the sound he makes when Bail’s mouth closes around the head of his cock is beautiful.

What with one thing and another, it is past noon by the time Bail realizes that his staff are conspicuous by their absence. He had left Obi-Wan’s clothes outside his door to be cleaned during the night, as he searched for something to keep his hands as busy as his mind; they have been returned, but otherwise they have been left completely alone, which, knowing his schedule, Bail knows is not supposed to be the case. It is Breha’s doing, no doubt, and he is exquisitely grateful for it. He leaves Obi-Wan performing a methodically-slow, stretching handstand as he goes to the fresher; once Obi-Wan has taken his turn they dress together, Obi-Wan’s hands pulling at seams in Bail’s luxurious tunic and cloak, settling them just so. Bail would like to see Obi-Wan in the same style, but his suggestion is laughed off, with just a hint of censure – in his desert leathers, after all, there would still be the chance of claiming Obi-Wan as an intruder were his presence to be captured by some Imperial spy droid or drone. In the garb of Bail’s own people, the game would most resolutely be up.

And so it is that they emerge, the Prince Consort and the fugitive; the palace is quiet and mostly empty on such a warm, somnolent day, and it is only the Queen who is in her throne room to greet them, and it is only when he sees the look on her face that Bail remembers, with mild shock, that she and Obi-Wan have never before met, nor even spoken.

Breha has always had a way with court etiquette, turning even the most stilted and strange stock phrases into poetry – and so it is here, too, as she advances towards Obi-Wan with her hands outstretched and her eyes bright.

“Lover of my beloved,” she smiles, and it is as if her voice is a balm for the very air as she clasps Obi-Wan close and then pulls back to look at him, her palms on either side of his face. “You have been sorely missed.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes are wide, but whether with astonishment or joy Bail cannot quite tell; the smile he gives Breha in return is, however, as sure a marker of his gratitude as Bail has ever seen. “The honor is mine, Your Majesty,” he murmurs, and turns one of Breha’s hands over in his to kiss her knuckles. “I thank you for keeping him safe, beloved of my lover.”

Breha’s grin turns conspiratorial as she raises her eyebrows at Bail. “Whatever are you staring at, B?”

“Nothing,” he croaks.

“Good. Then come, sit, eat with me – we are expecting a message any moment.”

It is Mon Mothma, as it turns out, who flickers into life on their datalink – she looks well, very well indeed, the life of open rebellion clearly suiting her, and her joy at seeing them together, as well as seeing Obi-Wan for the first time since the last days of the Republic, is palpable.

“I do not intend to become a public figure just yet,” Obi-Wan says at one point in the hours of strategic discussion which follow. “But if you send me to Chandrila, I will at least unmask myself as a Jedi and draw Vader’s attention away from Coruscant. The key will be a takeover of Coruscant itself by the fleet.”

“ _I don’t like the idea of using you as bait_ ,” Mon Mothma frowns, and Bail cannot but agree. “ _And at any rate, at this point our discussion is mostly academic. We will need at least another year, by my reckoning, before the fleet is ready for a full-scale assault._ ”

“Then I will attract Vader’s attention nonetheless,” Obi-Wan says, with a grim smile. “I have the services of one of the fastest ships in the galaxy at my disposal to make my various escapes, after all.”

The grin he gives Bail is mischief itself. “I understand you’ve met my little co-pilots.”

“Death-wishes, the lot of you,” Bail mutters mutinously, internally groaning at the image in his mind of the listing, creaking _Falcon_ , and Obi-Wan’s laughter only just takes the edge off his renewed sourness at being left behind again.

Obi-Wan does have his lightsaber with him, as it turns out, when Mon Mothma has vanished and the three of them have retired to Breha’s quarters, which are larger, airier, always brighter than Bail’s despite his own delicate tastes. He keeps it in the heel of one of his boots, and it is heavier than Bail remembers when it is placed in his hands; the metal shines undiminished, the gold head dully glinting in the sun. Breha seems fascinated by it, turning it over and over in her palms with a clear longing to see the blade, a girlish excitement in her eyes.

“I must speak with you both about your protection in the coming months,” Obi-Wan begins, and his expression is serious enough as he sits with them for Bail to know that they must both listen closely.

“Our protection?” Breha asks. “We have Rex and Cody here, and every contact imaginable.” Then she pauses, and takes in the fold of Obi-Wan’s hands, and speaks again. “You are not speaking of the protection of our bodies, then.”

“You once told me that you would accept no Jedi mind-tricks, Bail,” Obi-Wan says, staring at the ground. “In the event that either of you has the misfortune to come face-to-face with the Emperor again, or with Vader, your thoughts will be as playthings to them. It will be excruciating, and hopeless, and you will give up your secrets with no thought to your loved ones just to secure your own safety.

“You _will_ , Bail,” he adds, sharply, to stave off Bail’s immediate attempt at protest. “So we have two choices. The first is that I teach you some rudimentary technique, and we hope for the best – the second is that I remove all memory of myself, in particular, of the origins of the Alliance, and of Leia’s parentage from your minds.”

“No.”

“Bail – ”

“ _No_ ,” Bail says, and he is standing before he realizes what he is doing, angrier than he has ever been. “How _dare_ you presume to – ”

“Sit down, B,” Breha says quickly, grabbing at his hand, and Bail falls into the chair next to her with all the strength fled from his limbs.

“Look at me when you say that,” he breathes, as Obi-Wan’s head remains resolutely lowered. “Obi-Wan, _look_ at me.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze, when he does, is reluctant, but firm. There is nothing there that Bail can see that could convince him this is a lie.

“Gods, you really mean it,” he whispers.

“My choices have ever been determined by yours, Bail,” the Jedi says, his hands clasped calmly in front of him. “And no matter what the consequences, the choice _is_ yours.”

“Then I will choose to fight them with what I am now,” Bail declares, tightening his grip on Breha; when he looks at her he can tell she agrees, and just like that, Obi-Wan is his familiar self again, calm and powerful, as though _nothing_ has happened, and –

 _Later_ , says a voice at the back of Bail’s head, and, ungraciously, he puts himself and his wife at the mercy of Obi-Wan’s hands as he talks them, slowly and quietly, through the construction of their minds. There are many more layers than Bail would have expected, not ever having spent too much time philosophizing on the idea of an inner life; meditation feels strange, like he is sinking into another world, and disorienting himself with regard to the life he knows.

“Better,” Obi-Wan says, much later, with his palms on Bail’s temples. “You must bury things deeply, Bail, and make sure only you know the path.”

 _I’ve done that for years already_ , Bail thinks, and Obi-Wan’s sigh makes him wonder if each of those words has echoed, now, in Obi-Wan’s own head.

Breha leaves them alone in the late afternoon, and, strangely, cocooned there in her chambers and Obi-Wan’s arms, Bail falls asleep.

When he wakes again, suddenly, it is evening, and he is alone; slouching his way through the corridors of the still unusually-quiet palace, he comes upon his lover in the nursery, where Leia is shrieking with happiness – waiting in the doorway, Bail watches her chase Obi-Wan around the room, pull at his hair, laugh at his twinkling-eyed teasing as though she has known him all her life. Perhaps, Bail thinks, remembering that he keeps that old, faded holo of Luke on Tatooine in his office for all to see if they care to, she really does understand.

“Look what I can do!” Leia is saying excitedly; she throws a ball up into the air, points at it as it falls, and suddenly it zig-zags in the air, taking a meandering path against the influence of gravity. Obi-Wan plucks it into his hand as Bail gapes; when he lets go of it again it hovers perfectly above his palm, slowly rotating, and Leia gasps.

“You can do it too,” she says, wonderingly, her hair haphazardly falling out of her braids, dark eyes wide.

“Indeed I can.”

“Teach me!” she yelps, and clambers up into Obi-Wan’s lap, knocking the ball away from them. “Teach me more! Rex and Cody can’t do it, they think it’s weird and tell me not to do it when Mummy and Daddy are here – ”

“Perhaps, one day,” Obi-Wan says, and swings her up into his arms. “They’re not wrong, you know – Cody and Rex. It’s a very special thing you do, and not for everyone to see.”

“Like a secret?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

“But you’re good at keeping them, aren’t you? I can tell.”

“Yeah.”

“Then will you keep this one for me?”

Leia pouts. “Why?”

“I’ll sing you a song to put you to sleep.”

“It had better be a nice song.”

They move out of Bail’s sight together, Leia’s small hand in Obi-Wan’s larger one; the tune is one Bail might know, a lilting, folk-like melody that speaks of ancient rituals and rites, but he doesn’t know the words at all.

“ _A little pretty bonny lass_ – yes, that’s you, dear, of course it is – _was walking in midst of May – ”_

“What’s ‘may’?”

“An old name for a month. Are you going to lie down and listen, or aren’t you?”

“Pfft.”

“ _I took her by the hand and fell to talking, of this and that – as best I could devise. I swore I would, yet still she said I should not do what I would. And yet, for all, I could not._ ”

Leia is sleepy, now, Bail can tell, as her voice falls into yawns. “What d’s it mean?”

“He loves her very much, you see – but they both have reasons for why they cannot be together.”

“Love means being together.”

“Yes, it does. It’s a silly song. Will it do?”

“Yes,” Leia breathes, and her quiet sighs fall into a regular rhythm as Obi-Wan emerges from her alcove and stops, half-shadowed, at the sight of Bail in the doorway.

“How long have you known?” Bail asks, hushed, when they are out in the relative safety of the corridor (there are so many things he wants to ask, now, but this seems the safest and easiest to answer).

“Since I arrived. You and Breha have only the most fleeting of Force sensitivities – you can sense impressions once they have been pointed out to you. Leia shines like a beacon.”

Bail takes a deep breath, scrubs a hand over his face. “What can be done?”

“I’ve already done it,” Obi-Wan says, looking at him earnestly. “I have placed safeguards around her, shields. They will only fall and reveal her if I am killed.”

“Well, then,” Bail says weakly. “You’d better not let that happen.”

“Indeed not.”

Obi-Wan steps into Bail’s space, looks up at him through the gloom of falling night. “I have so many things to say to you, and so little time,” he murmurs. “And yet all I want right now, Bail, is for you to take me to your bed. Will you?”

Bail does, and glories in it. In the middle of the night, he has Obi-Wan’s shoulders under his hands, leaves kisses down the length of his back, reaches beneath them both and pulls out Obi-Wan’s cries with his fingers. He will remember this, he thinks, for weeks, for months – for however long it takes until he no longer needs to rely on memory alone, or is no longer able to.

Obi-Wan shakes him gently awake just before dawn, and then waits for him on the balcony; he is fully-dressed, the lightsaber clearly back in his boot heel, a cloth hood tied to the back of his jacket and snug around his neck – the blaster rifle sits quietly by, and as Bail comes out into the chill morning, shivering as he wraps himself up in a cloak, it all seems to be happening too fast.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes. I am expected elsewhere.”

Bail lowers his head, wants to scuff at the ground like a disaffected teenager, but doesn’t. “What was it you wanted to say to me?”

It takes Obi-Wan long minutes to contemplate his answer – he stares off across the hills that rise up behind Aldera, watches the slow creep of light down their slopes.

“I have had so much time to think, in these last few years,” he begins. “The desert is so vast, it invites you to fill it with whatever you may make of it.”

Bail folds his arms in tighter, trapping what warmth he can. “What have you thought about?”

“About fate, mostly,” Obi-Wan says, a wry smile coming to his lips. “About how, for the first time in my life, there is nothing left for me, nothing possible, but to accept the galaxy as it is. It is the first step in remaking it, I think. And about the nature of my task – for so long I was taught that I was a defender, a guardian. For so long, too long, perhaps, I fought against the intrusion of destroyers, rather than _for_ the spread of the light.”

He turns to Bail, unfolds his arms, slides his hands into the press of Bail’s elbows until their palms touch. “The next time Darth Vader and I meet, one of us will die,” he murmurs. “I would prefer it to be him, of course, for I have seen too much of his destruction – though I may be damned for it, my impulse towards forgiveness is nothing weighed against the weight of the universe. I didn’t know that, once, and the shame of my failure nearly killed me.”

“It is not your shame,” Bail says hurriedly. “Obi-Wan, you must know that.”

“I do. The fact that I feel it nonetheless cannot be changed, however,” Obi-Wan says, and Bail thinks he is sensing one of those impressions Obi-Wan mentioned now – he can see sadness, like a shroud, hanging over him, pressing on thin shoulders, bearing them down to earth. “I just needed to say – ”

He looks up at Bail, and his eyes are hard and bright. “You have felt the weight of powerlessness for too long,” he breathes. “If you wish for importance, know this: the last Jedi fights his wars for you, Prince, and for your love.”

Bail stares, speechless, and doesn’t know quite whether the rush of energy flooding through him is shock or euphoria. “You mean – ”

“I just abjured thousands of years of the Jedi Code,” Obi-Wan says, smiling, “or, well – altered it quite severely, at any rate – and you want me to say it again?”

“Yes,” Bail nods. “A few more times, if you please.”

Obi-Wan laughs, leans forward, presses their foreheads together, their breath intermingling. “I love you, Bail Organa,” he whispers. “And if the tragedy of this world should take you away, I don’t know what would be left of me.”

Bail thinks of Padme, of ghosts trapped in living flesh, as Obi-Wan presses a firm kiss to his lips. Bail’s fingers are left grasping at nothing, bereft, when Obi-Wan steps away from him, slings his rifle over his shoulders, and, without another word, drops off the balcony into the shadows of the garden, quickly disappearing among the hedgerows.

Bail looks out over his home, and vows with everything he has that he will keep living – for what he sees, for what he has, for what he is.

That, finally, is something to fight for.

*

**TBC**

*


	6. Chapter 6

*

Padme has lost all sense of how time works.

She used to love it – time itself, and its permutations and uses. She had been so accustomed to its regimentation and order, in a Senate chamber or when clad in her heavy, ceremonial robes; she had experienced the thrill, so many times, of breaking its rules, of taking advantage of snatched moments and letting them stretch out infinitely in her imagination and memory. She had had the exquisite skill of marrying a particular action, word or deed to the perfect moment.

She has lost a lot of it, now – nearly a year, she thinks. Her early memories are fragmented, solitary, unmoored from time or even place. She remembers rough, white-daubed walls, the tasteless rawness of processed foods. She has walked in the desert many times, she knows, but no moment of it seems different from another.

She remembers Obi-Wan turning towards her in his cloak, saying _Look_ , urging her to gaze upon a small, screwed-up face, preparing to cry. She remembers Obi-Wan’s hands passing her cups of water, and realizes, much later, that she was witnessing the passage of months, for his knuckles exist in different states – pale, at first, and then at another moment they are darkened by extended sunlight, pitted by the blast of sand.

He tells her that Anakin lives, once, quiet and sad. There is another point when he is petrified for her, when he brings her somewhere where they can put a needle into her arm to keep her alive because, she thinks, she has not eaten for too long. She suspects these two times must be connected, somehow. Sometimes she wakes in the night to find him cradling her, his hands strong and unmoving around her wrists, and she thinks she must have been dreaming, but she can never remember what.

“How long has it been?” she asks, when, wandering, she comes back in from the desert to find him sitting in their doorway, waiting.

“Two years,” he answers. He watches her carefully for what must be the rest of a day as she mulls this over in her dulled mind.

An election campaign: one hundred days. A pregnancy: nine months. A term in the Galactic Senate: four years. Her rule of Naboo: eight years.

Two years is not such a long time, she decides (or at least, certainly not long enough) – and so she continues to drift.

They have visitors, she knows. Obi-Wan keeps a rusty old speed-bike on which he rides into town when they need supplies; he encourages her to come with him each time, and most times, she does. She remembers his low laugh on the first of these trips, when he overhears natives curious at the presence of newcomers commenting that they make a handsome couple, but that they could stand to smile more. On another trip, she watches from a distance as a man she knows – or perhaps he just shares the same face – grabs at Obi-Wan’s jacket, pats at him as though trying to make sure he’s real, and breaks down into quiet, wracked weeping. They talk for hours before Obi-Wan comes back to her, bright-eyed and gentle, and takes her home. There is a ring on his finger which blinds her if it catches the sun.

He joins her on her walks more often, after that, and it takes her too long to figure out why.

“You’re in love.”

He doesn’t look surprised – more relieved. “Yes, I think I am.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. I rather thought I could ask you your advice.”

She stops walking; puts a hand on his chest, lets her fingernails dig in. “Don’t.”

His smile is kind, and reminds her of just why she trusts him so completely – as well as why she wishes he would let her disappear and not come after her. “Don’t fall in love, or don’t ask you what it is supposed to feel like?”

“Both,” she says, and sets off again at a run, as though the desert can swallow up all of her sins.

Soon after that, Obi-Wan tells her that he is leaving for a while. He brings his friend into the Wastes with him, the blurred face slackening with astonishment at the sight of her. _You remember Cody_ , Obi-Wan says, and the clone sits quietly, solid, in a corner as Obi-Wan says his goodbyes.

“Be well, my dear,” he murmurs, pressing her hands. “Is there any message you want me to take?”

“No,” she says, and thinks: _Don’t lose yourself like this. None of us could bear it_.

With Obi-Wan gone the world seems sharper, clearer, if only because she seems more aware, now, of its dangers. She doesn’t know Cody, who sleeps silently on a floor-pallet well away from her small bedroom and tries to smile at her over their shared meals; the desert seems high-ceilinged, suddenly, the sky sucking her away from the ground.

On one of these bright, piercing days, the sound of a sputtering, small little engine approaches, and Cody frowns, gets up and goes out into the sun.

“Hey, kid,” she hears him say, amused. “Aren’t you a little young to be all the way out here by yourself?”

“Naw,” says the tiny voice. “Is Uncle Ben here?”

“No. Sorry, kid. Maybe another time.”

“Aunt Padme?”

She has seen him more times than she will ever admit to Obi-Wan. Oh, there have been the public encounters – Beru, walking nervously into town on her own, meeting them in a tavern at Obi-Wan’s request, saying that Owen will blow a gasket if he knows, and she and Obi-Wan talk to each other in hushed whispers, carefully not asking Padme to say anything herself as the baby fusses and gurgles on Beru’s lap. But there has always been something primal in her, something mutated and anguished and struggling under the weight of guilt, which has made her want more.

She is there when he takes his first steps, bracing himself along the sharp edges of a broken-down evaporator. She is there when Owen first plonks him down in the seat of a speeder and, with his big hands enveloping much smaller ones, steers them in a lazy circle around the farm, patting down Luke’s shrieks of delight. She meets him in a canyon, once, when he is playing with his tiny, exuberant friends, who all coo with awed curiosity at Obi-Wan’s strapped leathers and the rifle he carries for their protection against bantha and Tuskens alike; they peer up shyly under her hood, and Luke, with his fingers around Obi-Wan’s, stares up at her wide-eyed, mumbling that she’s awful pretty before, blushing, he runs back to Owen – Owen who, his face darkening with anger, starts towards her only for Obi-Wan to step in front of him, to talk him down with harshly whispered words she cannot hear.

“Uh,” Cody says, back in what must be the present, startled, and before either of them know it Luke is inside – it is always incredible, she thinks, that he can work machines better than he can walk, practically, for when he’s on the ground he is endearingly clumsy – and is standing in front of Padme, his little hands behind his back, rocking back and forth in his pleased embarrassment.

“Hi,” he mumbles.

She puts a hand on his head, lets the warmth of the sun that has soaked into his hair warm her, too.

Cody is looking back and forth between them. His eyes linger on certain features of Luke’s face; the gently-dimpled chin, the unruly hair, even his height – and then the clone crosses his arms, and says “Huh,” and that distracts Luke away from Padme – he scampers towards his new friend, peppers him with questions ( _Are you from off-planet? How long are you here? Where’s Uncle Ben gone?_ ) throughout which Cody manages to draw him outside again.

Padme is alone for some hours, as Cody decides he should fly the bike to the Lars farm to make sure Luke gets there safe, and then it is a long walk back. He comes back in at nightfall, yawning and stomping sand out of his boots; when he looks at Padme, there is a depth of understanding in his eyes which denotes a profound change. It seems Padme can no longer ignore that time, indeed, has gone on as it always has.

“You alright, ma’am?” Cody asks, and she nods, and is surprised to find that she might be telling the truth.

She lies awake at night. At some point during the long hours of cold and brilliant starlight, she whispers, “What is she like?” and Cody, apparently never asleep when it matters, rolls over on his thin mattress and talks to the ceiling – never at her, he knows enough never to do that – about a little Princess, so far away, who loves her parents very much, and makes friends easily, and has a terrible, vicious temper when she’s cross.

Obi-Wan comes back, and Cody, with a bow and a murmur of apology, leaves. Obi-Wan is calmer than she thinks she has ever seen him; there is a stillness to him, a certainty, as though he, like Cody, has rediscovered purpose.

“You told him,” she says one night, over their meal.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

Obi-Wan puts down his cup of precious water, rotates it slowly between his palms. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“Yes, you do.” It comes trickling out of her in dribs and drabs, not constructed in an argument as she might once have done, but passionate nonetheless. “You want to ask me for advice, after what you did?”

“After what I did _not_ do. I could have exposed you and Anakin at any time.”

“Condemning us to solitude. As though what we had could only remain a secret, as though we should have been ashamed.”

“ _Never,_ ” he says, fiercely, and he half-reaches out for her hand before snatching his own back. “Do you think I would ever put myself in this position if I thought what you had was unworthy?”

It feels like burning, she tells him. Like part of you has migrated outside your body and taken up residence somewhere you will never be able to find again. Like the entire galaxy has contorted itself into this new, treacherous path for you to walk, which has no exits or entrances. It preys on you at night, encourages dreams and nightmares which are thoroughly fantastical.

It makes you kill, she says, and she catches her breath, and thinks _No, that is wrong_. _Wrong, wrong, I never let that touch me_. But Obi-Wan looks at her like he believes this, too, and perhaps, terrifyingly, he does.

Time _has_ passed, she thinks. The Empire has broken them both and put their pieces back together in the wrong order, rough edges jutting out of their bones.

No matter what happens, it is not up to you, she says. You have put your heart into someone else’s hands, and if it falls – if they open their fingers and let it drop; if they raise it above their heads and smash it on the ground; if they let it drift slowly, disintegrating, away; if they are dragged from you with their wrists behind their back and foreign jackboots grind it into dust – it is out of your control, never to be regained.

 _Love conquers all_ , she was told, once. Once – for a long time, in fact – she had believed it.

Sometimes. Sometimes, yes, it does.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

She is the half-living proof of that.

She can also tell that Obi-Wan chooses to believe the former: that what is keeping him going is the prayer that his love will survive. It is a powerful idea, one that lends strength to his arms and brightness to his eyes, an implacable sense of purpose which, she knows, is what allows him to struggle through the miasma of death that clings to him, the numbers of unfortunates he unconsciously adopts as his own from any reports of Vader’s continuing atrocities. It is the power of hope which sustains him as he begins, in the early mornings and late evenings, when the desert is cool and empty, to practice with his lightsaber again, relearning his grace as she watches.

She begins to read HoloNet reports. She weeps for the first time since Mustafar.

“Is there anything you want, my dear?” he asks, as they walk arm-in-arm through towering canyons and dunes.

“I – ” They feel alien in her mouth, the words, but it seems important to get them out. “I thought I would be a mother, once.”

“You still can be.”

She laughs softly, looks down at her feet. “I don’t even know what it means.”

“It is whatever you make of it,” he says, and she lets that thought percolate; soon, she is thinking of it as a brand, as something seared into her skin.

It has been four years, finally (the length of a Senatorial term, she reminds herself) when Obi-Wan starts to pack a bag, and check the evaporator equipment, and pays more visits to Mos Eisley in a month than they have done together since they first arrived. And then he comes to her, and asks her to come with him, and she says yes.

They have a favorite ridge overlooking the Lars farm: she watches Luke playing, who has finally started to grow out of his baby fat, to become spindly and gangly like all growing Tatooine children, all ravenous and hyperactive, inches of their wrists and ankles visible at the cuffs of their shabby tunics. He has built his first clunky droid already – a creeping little vacuum of a thing which darts at his heels.

“We’ll come back,” Obi-Wan promises her.

“And even if we don’t,” she whispers, “he is happy.”

She looks at Obi-Wan, gulps, suddenly nervous. “That is an act of motherhood, isn’t it? Wanting him to be happy?”

“Do you know,” Obi-Wan says, and his laughter puts her at ease immediately, just like it always used to, relaxing every muscle of her – “I think it is.”

They are on their way to Chandrila: it will be a long journey, and a brutal civil war awaits them. Obi-Wan’s stillness, grown preternatural, is the only thing which keeps her calm. She hefts a blaster in her fist – it leaves blisters, puffy and painful, on her fingers.

She lets them bleed, and reminds herself that she still lives for something, if not for herself.

*

**TBC**

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

The war on Chandrila is long, protracted, and bloody. For the first six months, it seems the Alliance has enough of a handhold that they can fight the Empire on their own terms, and the seizure of several HoloNet stations and bandwidths pushes the Rebel message as far and wide as possible; the channels get shut down just as quickly as they go up, of course, but even two minutes of airtime, well-used, makes a difference. With the sights and sounds of war flashing on every screen from the Core to the Outer Rim, Bail hears with satisfaction of the hordes of people who are quietly abandoning their homes to join local cells; he hears of ships donated and bank accounts newly linked to a central, constantly-shifting system of finance, of pilots scrambling across the galaxy and system-hopping their way ever closer to Coruscant. From a distance, Mon Mothma makes short, defiant speeches which keep her homeland protesting, keep it from falling into despair and ruin, maintaining the moral of the besieged day by day.

And yet, still, somewhere, the Death Star lurks, as-yet-unfound by any Alliance search party, and Bail knows, with Leia’s fifth birthday only weeks away, that it cannot be long now before it is ready to be used. It has become harder for him to travel from Coruscant to Alderaan and back without being searched, stopped, or held up by officious, strict Imperial officers who have clearly been ordered to hamper his movements; while he is in residence on Coruscant for ever-more-meaningless Senate sessions, he dares not risk calling Breha for anything more than the most mundane of conversations, catching up on the inanities of their supposedly-pampered, diplomatic lives.

But then, as though tiring of petty distractions, the Emperor makes his move, and it is a heavy blow indeed. The Outer Rim is flooded with Imperial troops in a new, breathtaking attempt to consolidate territories and populations (Bail thinks of Luke, of whether there might now be Stormtroopers billeted in Mos Eisley, in Mos Espa, mere kilometers away from a defenseless farm and its innocent occupants). At the same time, he sends his greatest active weapon to Chandrila: Darth Vader sails for the stricken planet with most of a battle group of Star Destroyers behind him, and so efficiently blockades it and its moons that, within a week, there are frantic rumors of imminent starvation among its harried citizens.

It is then, of course, that the Alliance’s trump card truly begins to fight in earnest. Bail sees him in the newscasts, even the Imperial ones, for they are desperately advertising rewards for his capture, or simply for his corpse – a leather-clad figure, hooded and masked, leading the rebels of Chandrila through rubble and armies of droids, one hand sending enemies flying before him, the other wielding a long bolt of blue flame. The resistance flies not just the flag of the Alliance, but of the Jedi, openly and proudly, proclaiming their return.

Obi-Wan is instantly recognizable to Bail, of course, and he can only assume that he is to Vader also – and so this is the beginning of the endgame, now, the final crucial period of conflict that is possible before Vader himself, tiring at the failures of his subordinates, will descend to Chandrila’s surface and meet his former master in battle; these are the last few weeks the Alliance has to gather its strength, to find the Death Star, to fly its ships to Coruscant and take back the core of the galaxy.

The Emperor, as it turns out, has further humiliation and repression in mind in any case. Escaping home for a few days, Bail finds himself woken in the middle of the night by the sound of great ships coming in to land at Aldera – Leia stumbles out of her room rubbing sleep from her eyes, and Breha clutches at his arm, quivering, as they watch the Super Star Destroyer hover in a holding pattern above them in the atmosphere while TIE fighters and Imperial shuttles swarm into the spaceport, bringing hordes of crisply-attired officers with them. There are no Stormtroopers – not yet – but they are surely soon to come, and they have mere minutes to hide whom they can deep in the palace’s cellars – Rex and Cody must be spared, and as many of their staff as they are able – before there is pounding at their doors, and Leia begins to cry.

They seize Breha’s chief of staff, a thin, competent, dignified man named Antera, who is distantly related to Captain Antilles, right in front of them, and there is no doubting what they intend to do.

“You will release him,” Bail tries, and Breha’s protests are even more strident. “The Emperor will hear of this – ”

“I have the Emperor’s permission to place you and your family under house arrest if you resist us in our efforts to detain known Rebels, Senator,” the Commander sneers, and Bail has no answer to that – no protest he can offer that will work, no justification he can allow that could possibly compensate for the loss of Breha’s influence, and his, to the Alliance.

And so Antera is taken away, and Leia shrieks and hiccups herself to sleep with utter confusion and fear, and Bail hears, the next morning, that public executions have taken place in the center of Aldera without trial.

It is the heaviest shame he has so far had to bear.

Rex and Cody stay hidden in the bowels of the palace for three days, until the Imperial show of force dissipates and the Super Star Destroyer leaves Alderaan’s orbit, no doubt also on its way to Chandrila – they emerge grim-faced and more like the Army men they once were than Bail has ever seen them. They spend the better part of a week determining just what was done in Aldera, and what threats, or indeed who, might have been left behind among the population; satisfied that there have been no obvious spies or double-agents placed in the palace, they tentatively re-open communications with the wider world – and among the flood of outraged support and commiseration which immediately pours into Breha’s office, there is a short, heavily-encrypted message from Obi-Wan which the four of them take in Breha’s private chambers, huddled around a single datalink which they will no doubt have to destroy after the message is played.

Obi-Wan looks exhausted, is spattered with dirt and scorched with the remnants of blaster fire; there is a pinched pain in the corner of his eyes, but Bail thinks he can tell, despite the distance between them, that it is not due to any wound he himself bears. This is someone else’s agony, embodied in his flesh. The little blue figure takes a deep breath, and long moments, to speak.

“ _Master Yoda is dead_.”

Cody looks worriedly at Breha, who covers her mouth with a gasp.

“ _I cannot describe the sensation,_ ” Obi-Wan says; his recorded image rubs at its eyes, clenches at its throat. “ _I felt his passing, but it was so sudden – not the release of a willing soul into the Force. And it was not a single death – it was as though his spirit was bound up with thousands, millions of others. Living things –_ ”

He stops, looks to the side, looks back. “ _You must refocus your search for the Death Star_ ,” he continues, and now his voice is flat and merely tired, so tired. “ _Look in the Dagobah system. And you should assume that it is now operational_.”

The little hologram winks out, and they sit there for a long time, not even sure how to look at each other.

“We should go to the fleet,” Cody says, finally, glancing at Rex. “If the Empire comes back here, we should be as far away from you as possible, ma’am. And we can get this word to them in person, take it straight to Mon Mothma.”

“Yeah,” Rex sighs; he looks sideways, smiles at Breha, who looks at them all with an exhausted fondness that seems to come from the very center of her, accepting of anything.

They have one more night on Alderaan before they go their separate ways; Bail spends it with Leia, soothing her into the night, curled up around her sprawling, fidgety little form in the nursery as she dreams. At dawn, Rex and Cody come in to say their goodbyes; neither of them seem to have slept much, and Leia is only half awake as they pass her between them for bearlike hugs, mumbling and yawning into their shoulders.

Breha’s farewells, it seems, have been private. Cody leaves Bail with a firm shake of the hand; Rex follows more slowly, looking back frequently as Bail watches them make their way towards the battered, shadowed shape of the _Millennium Falcon_ in the recently-wrecked spaceport, as though he worries he won’t be coming back.

“I don’t like the idea of sending you back into the lion’s den, B,” Breha sighs later that day, as she smooths his coat over his shoulders, with Captain Antilles waiting at the ramp of the _Tantive IV._ “If the Emperor chooses to make an example of you, there’s no way for you to get out.”

“Better me than you,” he says, honestly, and gathers her in; breathes in her scent, a perfume made from Alderaanian wildflowers, hinting at mountain air and still lakes.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Beloved,” she says, as she draws back; she is strength personified, he thinks, and it reminds him of how many women he has seen in these last months with that exact same straightness to their spines, the mothers and commanders and pilots who have brought their menfolk, and their children, to war with them. “I expect you back.”

The news comes flooding through to the cockpit of the _Tantive IV_ the moment they drop out of hyperspace and into Coruscant’s orbit: the rebellion on Chandrila has been broken, claim their contacts, and everywhere on the planet’s surface the public HoloNet screens are playing and replaying scenes of defeat – of torn flags and burning buildings, of white-clad Stormtroopers, immaculate and unhurt, marching through deserted city streets. There is no news of individuals, only a terrifying collective mass of pleas for help, for evacuation, anything, distorted and quickly fading.

The fleet must come now, Bail thinks, dizzily – it must come _now_ , before the Imperial forces spread out across the galaxy return to Coruscant and barricade it, before Darth Vader is able to return his attention to hunting down every errant ship he can find. But there is nothing he can do, nothing he can say, no message he can safely send – he can only wait, and hope, and remind himself, when he arrives at his offices and finds the Emperor’s latest summons waiting on his intercom, handed over by a trembling secretary, of the task of secrecy that lies before him – one that his life now depends upon.

 _Paths dark and deep_ , he thinks to himself as the door to his shuttle opens, and he takes a long, slow breath; he treads those briar-tangled, overgrown avenues, buries his love and knowledge alive, imagines, somewhat absurdly, sets of small, thick doors being swung to and locked.

He has been called to what was the Jedi Temple, for the first time since he saw a Padawan gunned down on its outskirts, what feels like an age ago – the Emperor has finally decided to make it the residence of his tyranny, misshaping its hallowed walls to his own twisted purposes, though much of it remains as it was left. There are still monumental beams, half-fallen, looming through the semi-darkness; the smell of scorched stone and duracrete still seeps instantly into Bail’s senses.

“It is good to see you, Senator,” the Emperor says. He is on his feet just inside the main entrance to the great building, though stooped so low over a cane that Bail cannot see his face – on purpose, no doubt, to make it harder to read his intentions.

“May I ask why I am here?” Bail keeps his voice low and cool, making no secret of his disdain. “I must warn you, sir, that I will refuse any further attempt to invade Alderaan’s sovereignty as your troops did so barbarically this past week, if that has anything to do with what you propose.”

“It does not,” Palpatine says, what Bail can see of his teeth curling back from his lips. “But Alderaanian treachery is, I’m afraid, part of what we must discuss.”

“I suggest you put a name to it, unless you want me to complain of unwarranted slander and murder on the Senate floor.”

“Oh, it has a name,” the Emperor chuckles, and then he swings away from Bail, opens a side-door to his office with a wave of his hand. “Walk with me.”

Bail follows as carefully as he can; he walks across the main hall of the Temple, through the shattered remnants of what was once the library – there are still pages scattered across the floor, which Palpatine seems to take particular pleasure in stepping on.

“You will be pleased to hear,” the Emperor says suddenly, jolting Bail out of his reverie as they descend a set of crumbling stairs, “that in the wake of his defeat, the so-called Jedi who had been leading rebellion efforts on Chandrila has been identified.”

 _Dark and deep_ , Bail thinks again, quickly, and swallows, folding his hands into his sleeves. “I congratulate you.”

“How very gracious,” Palpatine hisses. “Once his face was made known to us, Prince, we were able to run a galactic scan for his biometrics – a little piece of technology my closest advisors have helped me develop. This is the treachery: we have reason to believe he was on Alderaan, a little under two years ago.”

He swings back to look at Bail directly for the first time, and his eyes shine a flat yellow, diseased, flaring with rage. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I do not.” Bail continues to put one foot in front of the other, looks resolutely downwards into those flaming eyes. “Do you have any evidence that he made contact with anyone of importance?”

There, he has hit upon it, as the Emperor smirks crookedly. “No, Senator. You are quite correct to ask. He was merely detected utilizing your spaceport in Aldera. A coincidence, perhaps.”

“I can assure you of that.”

“A shame,” Palpatine muses, leading them further into the bowels of the Temple – there is newer metal here, lining the once battle-scorched walls, making their footsteps echo, and Stormtroopers stand at regular intervals as though guarding something important. “I was under the impression that you were once quite the intimate of this traitor. Your knowledge of him would have proved invaluable to us.”

“I make it a point not to associate myself with anyone of the sort. If he claims a connection with me, I can assure you it is a lie.”

“Well,” the Emperor says, and holds out a wrinkled hand. “Perhaps you can ask him yourself, then, what on earth he might wish to accomplish with this – lie.”

There is a door in front of them, metallic, hydraulically sealed and marked with the Empire’s seal, and Bail stops dead, his mouth running dry. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“He is here, Senator,” the Emperor breathes, and now his eyes say that he knows everything, that Bail has failed, and that it is all over. “Shall we go in?”

*

**TBC**

*


	8. Chapter 8

*

He is not prepared for this. How could he ever be? Bail feels something roil in his gut, quickly and ruthlessly suppressed; there is a sour taste in his throat as the door opens and, beyond, two red-clad Imperial guards stand silent watch.

“More guests, Darth?” says a rasping, exhausted voice, somewhere in the gloom. “The last was very unpleasant. You have a lot to learn in terms of hospitality.”

The Emperor looks sideways at Bail; a slim smile distorts the ruin of his face. “You need not fear, Senator,” he drawls, as the door closes behind them; there is a corridor, a small turn, beyond which the telltale hiss of Vader’s respirator echoes. “He can do you no harm.”

Bail advances, allows himself to be led, bites the inside of his cheek hard enough that he knows he will end by hurting himself – and there he is, Obi-Wan, ragged, hanging, his blood-clotted hair mere inches from the ground. There is a thin device of some sort around his neck, clamped to his collarbones; Bail’s memory, eager to grasp onto something that is not this present horror, reminds him of stories he had heard during the Clone War of Jedi in captivity denied the Force, who went mad with it, who died bereft and weak. That must be what this is, a suppressor of some kind, for if he had the Force at his disposal Obi-Wan would not be here, would not tolerate nor be unable to free himself from the binders which keep his thin wrists in the center of his back, the force-fields which have him suspended.

“Senator Organa,” he says, with a hint of a smile, his eyes unfocused. “It has been a long time.”

Vader is there beside him, looming; when he turns his black gaze on Bail Bail can feel sudden pressure on his temples, as though his head has been placed in a vise. “And how long would that be, exactly?” the Sith’s apprentice asks.

“Well, by my reckoning, it must be – ”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Vader interrupts, and Obi-Wan’s voice chokes off; he struggles for breath, he closes his eyes and his fists clench.

“Just over five years,” Bail whispers, completely hoarse; he clears his throat, attempts to plant his feet more firmly, tighten the cross of his arms on his chest. “At a reception held by the Senate Security Council, if I am not mistaken. General Kenobi was soon to depart for Utapau.”

“Good,” the Emperor says; he is laughing, Bail is disgusted to see, chuckling deep in his neck. “Very good.”

“I demand an explanation,” Bail blurts, willing his hands to stop shaking. “I will not be a party to whatever it is you do here.”

“Come, now, Senator,” the Emperor drawls. “Our goals are the same – are they not? Oh, if your concern is that he is suffering unduly, fear not – his execution will be swift, and relatively painless. A public event, I think, and as soon as possible. But before he so tragically leaves us, he is going to tell us the position of the Rebel fleet, and the names of its leaders.”

The Emperor turns fully to Bail, eyes gleaming. “Unless, of course, Senator – you have any information to share which would supersede his, and spare him.”

“He does not,” Obi-Wan rasps.

“I grow tired of your tongue, Jedi,” the Emperor hisses, spitting the title as though it is poison – he moves fast, faster than Bail would ever have expected of his age and decrepitude, and when he witnesses, for the first time, the power of the Dark Side, it is something he will never forget. It is the _sound_ of it that is the worst: the crackle and fizz of lightning, indifferent to its victim’s suffering – the wrecked, endless screaming that is ripped from Obi-Wan’s throat.

It ends, after an interminable minute; Obi-Wan turns his head to one side, retches, spits spatters of blood at the Emperor’s feet.

“Hospitality,” he grunts. “Lacking.”

Vader is staring at Bail, too tall, too unreadable.

“I can tell you nothing,” Bail gasps. He no longer knows whether it is fear or horror which is sapping his strength; he doesn’t have the mental space available to him to wonder what it is he must look like, a cowering, utterly defeated man whose only recourse is to lie, and betray, and disappoint.

There is a huff of amused fury beneath the dark mask; Vader turns to Obi-Wan, kneels down, grabs a fistful of hair and lifts his former master’s face towards him.

“You hear that, Obi-Wan,” he says, almost kind. “He has condemned you to be left alone with me.”

“And I forgive him for it,” Obi-Wan sighs, his eyes sliding closed. “With all of my heart.”

Something in Bail’s chest spasms; it is all he can do to stare, but then his view of Obi-Wan is blocked by the Emperor’s cloak.

“Do not think you are to be spared, Senator,” the Sith murmurs. “I suggest you make your preparations.”

Bail doesn’t know how he has the power to nod, to turn, to get himself out of the tiny cell and back into the corridor beyond – behind him Vader is speaking in low tones to the Emperor, something angry and pleading about the Rule of Two and the preservation of dynasties, but he doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to understand it. As soon as he clears the bowels of the Imperial jail, he breaks into a run – he sprints across the deserted Temple, down the cracked, disintegrating grand stairway, hurls himself into the pilot’s seat of his shuttle and presses, with shaking fingers, the autopilot that will take him back to his offices.

He gives up, just briefly, just for a moment, as the shuttle joins the streams of oblivious, day-to-day Coruscanti traffic – he bends double over the control panel, screws his eyes shut, tries and fails to tell himself not to weep.

Thinks, _Forgive me_.

And then he straightens, takes a deep breath, and starts to plan exactly what he will need to destroy in his residence, what he will need to bring away with him, how long it will take. He has carried a panic button with him for months, now, an emergency transponder which will send an instant signal to Captain Antilles – when his faithful companion answers the call, he tells him to have the _Tantive IV_ ready at a moment’s notice, and receives swift confirmation.

His offices are still empty, but he knows they will not be for long – there will be Stormtroopers coming soon, and officers with the power to search all of his documents, pore over every communication and movement he has made for the past several years. He runs a peerless virus on his several dataports, scrubbing them clean, and hopes it is enough; he checks his private papers, his various devices, searches every corner and cranny for evidence of bugs and finds nothing, throwing what might be even vaguely recriminating into the one bag he will take with him when he flees.

He cannot stay, he knows, and he will not. He will not stay and watch the moment when the electroguillotine snuffs out what is left of the life of the one he loves most; he will not, Gods forbid, be invited to attend said happy event at the personal invitation of the Emperor. He will not stand on that dais, he will not be offered, and be unable to refuse, the honor of doing the deed himself before he, too, is arrested and taken away to share the same fate.

He _will_ not.

When there is a firm knock at his door, he freezes, and sweats, and takes a moment to stand upright, to wipe at his brow, before welcoming his fate, whatever it might be. “Come!”

It is a single Imperial officer – a young man, barely out of the Academy by the looks of him, bearing a small package under his arm. “From the office of the Emperor, sir,” he says, altogether without guile, and quietly leaves the box on Bail’s desk before he clicks his heels, salutes, and leaves again, drawing the door closed again behind him.

The box is beautifully-made, but somehow queer to look at – its lid is decorated with a seething mass of intertwined, black wooden forms which become more incomprehensible the more Bail stares at them. It is folly to open it, he knows, and yet, of course, he does, with a growing sense of dread.

It is Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, snugly cocooned in silk and velvet, and just like that, Bail collapses into his chair.

By the time Captain Antilles arrives to fetch him, he has recovered enough to slip the lightsaber hilt into his tunics and gather what is left of his wits; it is a quick and desperate race to the landing bay where the _Tantive IV_ is berthed, but to Bail’s astonishment – and not a little bit of unease – they arrive there without incident, and they are not stopped or even hailed as they power their way out of Coruscant’s atmosphere.

“Where to, sir?” Antilles asks, his hands firm on the controls; Bail has joined him in the cockpit, unwilling to be left alone and at the mercy of his own thoughts, and his answer is easy.

“Alderaan, and quickly. Whatever the Emperor is threatening, I suspect sending fresh troops to Aldera will only be the start. We must evacuate the Queen and the Palace.”

The comms system at Antilles’ elbow crackles and blinks with lights as the Captain turns away to make his hyperspace calculations: the voice which emerges from it is entirely unexpected.

“ _Jeez, what a bucket of bolts you’ve got there. Take some advice, Pops – you wanna hitch a much faster ride?_ ”

The _Millennium Falcon_ is roaring across their viewport, suddenly, lazily flipping, as though the ship itself is showing off, and not at the behest of its troublemaking masters.

“What the – ”

“ _Sir!_ ” It is Rex’s voice, taut and worried, but far more welcome than Calrissian’s adolescent taunts. “ _Are you all right?_ ”

“No,” Bail says, and then shakes his head at himself and tries again. “Yes, Rex, I’m unhurt. Why are you here?”

“ _Thought you might have needed some help, sir. The fleet is on its way, but we’re happy to take you back to Alderaan. Keep everyone together, so to speak –_ ”

There is a muffled scuffle on the other end of the line as the _Falcon_ edges closer, and then a distant yelp – _Fuck, she bit me!_ – before Bail’s breath is taken away by a cheerful, babbling little voice.

“ _Daddy! Han let me fly the ship!_ ”

Leia hurls herself into Bail’s arms as soon as he scrabbles his way through conjoined airlocks and into the _Falcon’s_ hold – she is animated and wriggling, her hair and words flying at a hundred miles a minute. Rex and Cody’s pinched, identical smiles are what convince him to usher her away back to where a very disgruntled Han Solo and a gently-sniggering Chewbacca are waiting for her over a game of sabaac as the _Falcon_ whirls into the proper alignment and, moments later, makes the telltale sickening, lurching jump into hyperspace.

“What in all the Gods’ names – ”

“Queen Breha insisted, sir,” Rex says, putting a hand on Bail’s wrist that he is sure is meant to be soothing, but will only reveal the pounding rate of Bail’s heart. “There were rumors flying as soon as you left that Alderaan would be invaded again at any second – she wanted Leia out, so we booked her safe passage to the fleet. And, well, after that – seemed best to keep her with us, sir. If anything hairy happens, we’ll warp out so fast we’ll be in the Outer Rim before they even realize we’re gone.”

Cody looks carefully at the lines in Bail’s face, at the gentle shivering which, Bail knows, is visible in his shoulders. “Sir, did something happen down there?”

It hurts to say it, physically hurts, as though he is scooping out some vital organ. “Palpatine has Obi-Wan held prisoner. They’re going to execute him – once they’re sure they can’t torture the fleet’s location out of him.”

Cody stares, and then turns away, and his open palm, then his fist, make dull, thudding impact with the nearest bulwark. “Fuck,” he snarls. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Rex looks down at the ground, swallows, and sighs as he puts an arm fully around Bail’s shoulders. “You should try to rest, sir,” he says, quietly. “We’ll be in hyperspace for several hours, and Cody and I have some intercepted transmissions to decode – stuff encrypted with old GAR keys, maybe something about the Death Star.”

Bail allows himself to be led, to be shown into a cramped, but not unwelcoming room with small, crooked little bunks, visibly well-loved. “What do we know so far?”

“That it’s Tarkin’s gig, and that it fucking blew Dagobah away,” Rex says shortly, and then he just stands there in the semi-darkness for a moment, as though appreciating the gravity of his own words, before he leaves Bail alone.

Bail is not sure how long it is before he decides that he cannot just sit by himself, just waiting; and so, with his cloak wrapped around him against the chill of space which, he thinks, seems to be seeping more quickly through the hull and into him than it ever has before, he ventures out into the quiet, sweeping corridors of the Falcon, boots discarded, metal floors chill against his feet. He walks past the door to the lounge, where Leia is dozing with her head cushioned on Chewbacca’s furry shoulder; he makes his way without comment past the cabin where Rex and Cody are conferring together over several datapads, frowning, tapping their fingers in irritation as they wait for their programs to give them answers.

It is near-silent in the cockpit as the stars flash by, but it is not empty: Calrissian is in the pilot’s seat, watching him beadily as Bail gingerly settles in the co-pilot’s chair and stares at the familiar, soundless passage of passing suns.

“How old are you, now?” he asks, eventually.

“Eighteen.” Lando looks it, too – he’s losing that stretched, gangly look that the Corellian boy, Han, still has, and there is a new power to his limbs and looks that is handsome, and probably dangerous. “Why?”

“No reason.” Bail shifts where he sits, looks down at his hands, and reconsiders, with the most of a smile he can muster. “When I was eighteen, I was told I had to choose between being a Senator, and being a King.”

“Fun,” Lando says, rolling his eyes. “Is that supposed to impress me?”

“No, no,” Bail says, rubbing his hands within each other. If he concentrates hard enough, he can almost remember the texture of Obi-Wan’s palms against his. “No, just – thinking.”

“She’ll be fine, y’know,” Lando adds, after a few moments of silence. He is looking studiously casual when Bail glances up at him, but his eyes are sharp. “Your kid. We won’t let anything happen to her.”

“I believe you,” Bail nods. “Strange as it may sound.”

Calrissian snorts, and turns to poke at some of his instruments. “Hey, man – we may be mercenaries, but we know it matters who pays us. I’ve seen enough to know that you’re the good guys.”

“Thank you,” Bail says, slowly.

“If that even means anything to you.”

“It does.”

“’Cause I mean, it doesn’t have to – ”

“Lando,” Bail says gently, and when the boy’s eyes reluctantly return to him, he realizes that he feels better, much better – that this, at least, is something good he can do, something kind and useful he can bestow. “It does.”

“Sure, whatever,” Lando mutters, a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. His fiddling with his control panel seems to have some purpose, now. “We’re only a few minutes out from Alderaan – ”

Which is when a torrent of filthy, desperate cursing suddenly breaks into the air behind them, from the bowels of the ship, and Lando whirls around with wide eyes – it is Cody and Rex who rush into the cockpit, practically falling over each other, and both are wide-eyed and frantic.

“Get us out of hyperspace,” Cody shouts. “Do it now!”

“What the hell gives?” Han is calling from behind them, trying to push past a white-faced Rex as Lando, astonished, braces himself across the control board as though to bodily protect it from any intruder. “We’re nearly there, we can’t just drop out into the middle of noplace – ”

“ _Now_ , damn it!” Cody roars, and he does indeed bodily lift Lando out of the way, who goes flying with a crunch into the wall as Chewbacca, with a deafening snarl, also arrives to voice his displeasure – Cody’s palm bangs down hard on the hyperspace controls, and with an almighty lurch, the _Falcon_ shudders her way into sub-space, sending all of them careening in all directions.

They have made it to Alderaan – or nearly, at least, Bail can see, as he scrabbles upright and peers out of the viewport: it is there, an unfamiliar distance from them, blue-green and inviting.

It has two moons.

There should only be one.

“Turn us around,” Cody is yelling, above the din, his hands back in the front of Calrissian’s shirt. “You turn us around _right_ the fuck now – ”

A flash of blinding, all-obliterating light – Bail blinks against it, wants to scream but can’t, and then there is nothing but rubble, but the flash of core magma and stardust.

 _Breha_ , he thinks wildly, and falls.

*

**TBC**

*


	9. Chapter 9

*

“Sir – ”

Coming to feels like it takes a very long time. There are fingers tapping at his cheeks; the collar of his cloak has been loosened around his neck. Here, the sensation of a cold deck underneath him; there, the lurch and rumble of engines.

“Sir, please – all I need is a word. C’mon, say something.”

“No,” he mumbles, thickly, and Cody sighs above him and leans away.

He’s in the lounge, he sees, when he finally opens his eyes again; propped up against one of the low seats that ring the space, a half-empty cup of water at his side. When he cranes his head back, numbly, there are flashes visible outside the tiny viewport above Chewbacca’s gaming table – hyperspace, then. They are already far away from his wife’s grave.

“Where’s Leia?” he rasps.

Cody and Calrissian, who has been hovering in a nearby hatchway, exchange quick glances, and then Cody is half-standing, putting his hands into Bail’s armpits. “In bed, sir. I’ll take you.”

 _Two billion people_ , he thinks as they walk, and it sends him staggering, clutching at Cody, who stops, waits silently, completely solid, until he can get his feet underneath him again – until his heart isn’t thudding quite so hard that his vision sparks white.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Cody says simply; Bail is looking down at the ground, at the miraculous fact that he is still upright, as they stumble along. “Its trajectory was in those intercepts we were working on. If the Alliance had cracked them sooner, we could have – ”

He stops, and sighs. “Well, maybe we could have.”

Bail remembers Obi-Wan talking about fate, and thinks – no. No, they could not have. All they could have done was choose who to save, and they chose wrong.

Leia is in a cabin which must belong to either Solo or Calrissian, because it has a real bed instead of bunks, its sheets haphazardly tucked, and she is sitting in the middle of it, bundled up in blankets, her hair a tangled mess and her eyes bright with unshed tears. Rex is sitting cross-legged beside her, trying to interest her in an interlocking crystal puzzle, but not having much luck. He is pale and unnaturally still, his teeth visibly gritted beneath his lips, lines of thrumming tension in his neck.

 _Rex and Breha_ , Bail thinks, and a fresh wave of what must be grief, though it feels so insignificant compared to what this grief _must_ be, wracks through him.

He had never asked – and now he never will.

“Sir,” Rex mutters, with a minute nod, not looking up, as Bail half-falls onto the edge of the bed, and Leia starts crawling over to him, quivering with an imminent bout of crying; Cody puts a hand on Rex’s shoulder briefly before retreating and leaving them be.

“My hair’s all messy,” Leia sniffs.

“Oh,” Bail says, stunned. _I don’t know how to braid her hair_ , he thinks, panicked; that panic spreads quickly, has him wanting to scoop her up and never let her out of his arms, let alone his sight, again.

Rex knows how to do it, he remembers, as though from very far away. He helped Breha do it in the early mornings, in the nursery; he knows how to intertwine the thick, glossy strands, weave them together and wrap them up into the characteristic, neat shapes Leia loves.

“Here, squirt,” Rex sighs gently, and something in his face has indeed softened; Leia leans towards him, and he puts calloused fingers into the tangle, looks up at Bail, looks down to where Bail can start in on the other side, and so Bail does, tentatively picking up tendrils of it and smoothing it down behind her ear, wondering where it all goes, looking often over at the movement of Rex’s hands, which he thinks must be unusually slow and methodical for his benefit. By the time they are finished, Bail’s efforts are lopsided and listing by comparison, but Leia pats the bun assuredly nonetheless, and then looks up at him wide-eyed.

“Rex says they took Mummy away, like Mr. Antera,” she begins, hiccupping, and Bail looks quickly at Rex, who seems to have nothing to say – and Bail can’t blame him for it at all, not one iota, not for the lie and not for his inability to tell the truth.

“Well,” he starts, and clears his throat, and gathers her close, holds her curled up in his lap. “You remember all of the books we kept in our library?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you asked me, once, who had written all of those books, and when you could meet them.”

“And you said – ” Leia pushes her face into his shirt. “You said that most of them weren’t here anymore, and that their books were what was left.”

“That’s right. And – ”

Bail looks at Rex again, helplessly – wondering if, selfishly, he and the brothers he had once known had ever had any concept of what lay beyond death. All he gets is a blank stare which tells him that Rex is already too ashamed of his first deception to make up any more, and that if it were up to him, he’d already be teaching Leia the name of her mother’s murderer.

He looks down at Leia, takes a deep breath. “Mummy has been taken away from us, darling,” he murmurs. “And Alderaan, too.”

Leia’s hands clench in his cloak. “Why?”

“Because the Emperor wanted it so.”

“ _Why?!_ ” she demands, and now she is about to start shrieking, his firebrand girl, about to start ranting and raving until she can do no more, exhausted by her own feelings, and he cannot find it in him to stop her.

So he doesn’t. And she screams, and she cries, and she throws things at him, and at Rex, and collapses in a corner, sobbing into her knees, saying that it’s not fair and that she wants her mother back and it’s _not fair_ , and she is absolutely and completely right. It’s nearly four hours before she falls asleep, finally, flushed red with effort and fury and grief, her skin burning to the touch – enough so that Bail is briefly worried for her health until Rex simply sighs, kisses her forehead, and pulls a blanket up around her hunched shoulders.

“She’ll be alright,” Rex says quietly, and Bail desperately wants to believe it.

Han is at the door, skinny and disheveled in his Corellian stripes and a vest that is far too big for him, sheepishly peering at them. “Brought you some chow,” he mumbles. “Her Worshipfulness okay?”

“We hope.”

“Okay.” Han puts down the tray of meagre protein bars, scratches at the back of his head. “Oh, uh – Lando says we’ll be arriving at the fleet’s rendezvous point in just a few.”

“Where are we?” Bail asks Rex.

“The meeting point is about a parsec from Vulpter.”

“Did you radio ahead to – ”

“Yes, sir. They know. About Obi-Wan, too. Mon Mothma will meet us privately, first.”

Bail carries Leia, still groggy and mostly-asleep, in his arms when they disembark; Mon Mothma has, thankfully, secured them the use of an out-of-the-way hangar bay on board the main flagship, and she is the only being in sight as they come haphazardly down the ramp – what they must look like, Bail cannot guess, but it is easy to see Mon Mothma’s eyes fill with tears as they approach.

“Bail,” she whispers, clasping his hands, dressed as ever in her pure, scintillating white and silver. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me how we’re going to get through this,” he says, and with Rex at one of his shoulders and Cody at the other, he knows that this is all he has left – like Obi-Wan, he thinks, he knows, now, that there is only one future to hope for, and that he must give it everything of what little he still has.

The plan is, actually, as simple as it is desperate. A miniscule flaw _might_ have been detected in the design of the Death Star – it will be exploited by as many X-wings and smaller ships as the fleet has mustered, while the larger flagships will proceed directly to Coruscant and, if unchallenged, proceed to land troops on the planet in an attempt to directly assault Senate buildings old and new; with delegates held hostage, the hope is that more systems will rally, whether reluctantly or, relieved and willing, to their cause. If they come out of hyperspace to find the Imperial fleet waiting, returned from Chandrila, then they will fight there first, and meet whatever comes.

“There is a complication which has emerged in the last few hours,” Mon Mothma says, once the entirety of the fleet’s command has been assembled; it is a larger group than Bail might have expected, which seems somehow heartening despite the unbelievable nature of the task before them. “The HoloNet on Coruscant is down.”

“Down,” one of the Admirals interrupts, and murmurs break out around the ripples of assembled officers. “What does that mean, ‘down’?”

“It means that no HoloNet channel that broadcasts from Coruscant has transmitted anything in the past three hours and fourteen minutes.”

“Impossible,” one of the pilots mutters, and others are not far behind.

“We believe there is some confusion in the command structure on the planet. We urge all landing forces to be as cautious as possible in your movements, and to contact your command ships the moment you land to ensure that you have clear, working communications. Secure your positions at your given targets, and then wait for orders.”

“That wasn’t the whole story, was it,” Bail says to Mon Mothma, once the meeting has broken up and they have minutes, at most, before the fleet is due to go into hyperspace.

“No, but the supposed truth was too outlandish to share,” she says, looking sternly at a few of her compatriots who rapidly retreat at the implication that they were trying to listen in. “The rumor is that the Emperor is dead.”

“The Emperor is _what?_ ”

“I can’t believe it,” she says, quickly shaking her head. “I will not be lured into complacency by putting my hopes in false news. And besides,” she adds, grimly, “even if it _were_ true, I would not look forward to fighting an army led by Darth Vader instead. As for you – my dear friend, I do not know if I can give you the resources for what you plan to do.”

“I don’t need any. I have Rex and Cody, and they are the best fighters I know. A secretive attack has a far greater chance of succeeding than sending in an entire battalion.”

“Very well.” Mon Mothma squares her shoulders, breathes in deep. “Say goodbye to your daughter, Senator,” she says, “before you go bring him home.”

Leia has been kicking her heels outside the main war room, looking with rabid curiosity at the pilots in their flight gear as they file past; she is talking to Han and Lando when Bail emerges, and angrily so, as is her wont.

“But why can’t I go with you?”

“’Cause we’re going to attack the _Death_ Star, Your Highnessness, and we can’t get you blown to smithereens,” Han drawls.

“Bet I could fly it better than you.”

“You couldn’t even see over the wheel, babydoll.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Suit yourself,” Han sniggers, and with that, and a two-fingered salute (or at least, that’s what Bail fervently hopes it is, because if Leia starts imitating it in polite company he doubts he could ever live it down), he and Lando and Chewbacca are off, and Bail is left alone with his little girl once again.

“Are you going somewhere too?” she asks, solemnly, picking at a hem of her dress.

“Yes, sweetheart. I’m going to go find a friend of mine – you met Ben, once.”

“He’s like me,” Leia says, blinking. “He can make things move, and talk to ghosts.”

“You’ve talked to ghosts?”

“I dunno. Maybe. They’re hard to see.”

“Well,” Bail says, and kneels down so he can pull her into a hug, telling himself that if he is to die, this will be the last thing he will think of before his soul flees his body. “You’re going to be fine staying here, I promise. You’re so good at making friends – I’m sure you’ll find lots of people to – ”

He trails off, because in the melee of rebels and personnel that are flooding through the flagship, he can see two people he’d never thought he’d see, ever again. At the end of the corridor, hand in hand, their stillness is distinctive – a petite, dark-haired woman in an Alliance jumpsuit, and at her side, a boy with desert-bright hair.

He dares not call out to them. He cannot spare this emotion, this forethought, now. But he can do this – he can turn his daughter’s shoulders towards them, point them out, whisper in her ear –

“Them, maybe. Would you like to go meet them?”

“Okay,” she says, doubtfully, but Bail can already tell that she is intrigued, is already slipping from his grasp. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too,” Bail murmurs, and watches her go.

Rex and Cody are already waiting for him in the hangar which holds their specially-assigned, Empire-issue shuttle; with surprise the key to their making their way down to the planet, the two clones are also forcing their way into stolen Stormtrooper gear, and don’t seem very happy about it at all (“It doesn’t fucking _fit –_ ” “How weak are these shinies that we’re out of the game for five years and _still_ have more muscle mass than can get into this stupid armor?”). The jump though hyperspace to Coruscant does not take long, and Bail spends it sitting quietly, hefting his own small blaster in his hands while Cody and Rex run thorough checks on the veritable armory they are packing into the ship – and methodically, implacably, removing every thought from his head that was ever meant to hide what he is and what he feels.

If he is to meet Vader again, he will look him in his electronic face and say to him directly that he has come for Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom he loves, and that there is nothing any of them can do about it.

When the hangar doors open, it is to a scene of utter chaos. The flagship has entered Coruscant’s outer orbit right in the middle of a pitched battle – there are several Imperial Star Destroyers, but, to Bail’s untrained eye, it doesn’t look like _all_ of them, and that, at least, must be cause to celebrate. Rex’s hands are quick at the controls of the shuttle, even as blast-cannon fire starts to pepper into the hull, sending bulwarks around them shaking and dancing, and they make their way into Coruscant’s atmosphere without difficulty, nimbly avoiding the crashes and careening of TIE fighters and what X-wings the Alliance could spare.

It is a cloudy day. The atmosphere of the planet is covered in a thick blanket of fog, which reflects the pale colors of green and red laser blasts. Plunging into it is one of the most unnerving things Bail has ever experienced; they are flying blind, relying on scanners and the data on their instruments alone, and Bail cannot imagine what is coming.

He would never have imagined this, at least: that when they finally emerge into the cityscape, they find a substantial portion of the Senate district to be on fire, and that there is the wreckage of hundreds of speeders and Imperial ships of all shapes and sizes in the streets, bisecting buildings, smoldering in pits that were once spaceports.

“Shit,” Cody breathes, as Rex sets a course for the looming hulk of the Temple on the horizon. “Sir, could it be true?”

“This sure looks like a coup,” Rex says, frowning. “But we don’t know who’s in charge, and that’s no fucking good.”

The area around the Temple is relatively empty, and Rex lands as close as he can to the base of the steps; but it is inevitable, perhaps, that they will not be alone in this place, for as they start their way towards the top with Cody and Rex wearing their purloined Stormtrooper helmets and Bail leading the way slightly so he can adopt the attitude of a prisoner at a moment’s notice if needed, they see that there are other ships parked at the entrance above them – some bustling with activity, others seemingly empty, but there are definitely Imperial officers ahead, and ones they will have to bluff their way past.

Bluffing, however, doesn’t seem to be a part of Rex’s plan. He stops dead when they reach the top, and then, with a muffled, tinny curse through the inadequate radio in his uniform, he charges forward, ignoring Cody’s warning shout, and before he knows it Bail is dropping to the ground, huddling away from live fire as Rex hurtles his way through the scattering mass of Imperials, shooting them when he can and spraying covering fire when he can’t.

“Rex, fuck’s sake!” Cody bellows – he pauses to take out three of his own, then grabs Bail by the collar, dragging him along until they can take shelter with Rex behind one of the empty ships, where they find that Rex’s mad dash was in pursuit of one particular man.

Tarkin hasn’t changed much. Bail remembers him as a slimy, uncompromising, sadistic little man patronized for his efficiency; the haughty expression on his face has not changed, even when his head is pinned to the ground by Rex’s boot.

“Come back to report to your boss, huh?” Rex is snarling, his helmet discarded; he’s wielding the biggest rifle that he and Cody had brought with them, the barrel pressed firmly to Tarkin’s temple. “Good day’s work at the office for you?”

“Senator Organa,” Tarkin says, utterly unashamed and clearly unafraid, his light eyes flinty and cold. “What a nasty surprise. Call off your dog, would you, and perhaps we can see to it that you will all receive a fair trial.”

“Rex,” Cody warns.

Bail thinks of Breha, of her smile, given so willingly – and hopes that Leia was wrong when she said that she had seen ghosts, because he would never want Breha to witness this.

“I’m sorry, Grand Moff,” he says, calmly. “He’s not my dog, and I don’t intend to be tried.”

The bloom of fear in Tarkin’s eyes should be satisfying, but of course it isn’t, as Rex leans down.

“Go to hell, you son of a Hutt,” he whispers.

Bail turns away; he jumps at the sound of the rifle blast behind him, thinks he hears the splatter of blood and brains, but he will not look.

“Come on,” Cody says, his voice rough and cracking, and he grabs Bail by the arm, hurries him at a crouch through the desultory fire which is badly aimed in their direction as they run into the Temple with Rex hard on their heels. It is empty inside, as empty as Bail remembers it from his last, searing visit – but there is definitely something different, a heavy blackness to the air, as though there is radiation seeping from the walls.

“Where to, sir?” Cody asks. He has a handheld scanner activated, and is quickly checking their surroundings – when Bail points them to the staircase down which the Emperor had taken him, Cody inspects it, too, and peers down into his screen, his face lit from below with an eerie green light.

“I’m not picking up anything from the lower levels. If there are life forms down there, they’re shielded or too deep for this thing to find.”

“You stay here,” Bail orders, taking in the set of Cody’s shoulders and Rex’s face, still twisted with fury. “They might come in to chase you, and you don’t want to get cornered down there if you need to return fire. If I get into trouble, I can get you on comms.”

“I don’t like it,” Cody frowns.

“It’s what he wants,” Rex interrupts – he is already kneeling, hoisting one blaster to his shoulder with one hand while laying out a belt of grenades with the other. “We stay here.”

Cody still looks dissatisfied, but a clenched hand on Bail’s shoulder is the only protest he offers before he, too, starts to take up a defensive position – and so Bail turns, and pulls his own blaster, such a foreign thing, from his sleeve, and – with the weight of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber suddenly so very heavy inside his cloak – starts to descend down into the dark.

*

**TBC**

*


	10. Chapter 10

*

The makeshift prison is deserted. The Imperial bodyguards who had stood inside the blast doors (now gaping open) locking Obi-Wan away from the world have vanished; the Stormtroopers are nowhere to be seen. Lights are flickering and sputtering as Bail creeps forward, as though diseased and dying.  

“Obi-Wan,” he calls, as loudly as he dares, and he thinks – he _thinks_ – he hears something ahead of him, a minute shift of limbs, an intake of breath. The response, when it comes, is low and hoarse, on the edge of laughter. 

“Another one of your shades, Darth? I will tell it what I told you before: there is nothing left for you to take.” 

Bail shivers and hurries on, his blaster falling to his side, then to the ground. 

“Obi-Wan,” he says, again, and stands, terrified, in the open door of the cell; huddled on his knees, face-down in the middle of the floor, Obi-Wan looks as though he has not moved for days, the Force-suppressing collar still lopsided on his neck. 

“I will not speak to it, Darth,” Obi-Wan says, louder, to the cold duracrete, his head lolling sideways and his eyes yet unseen, blanched pale in the harsh overhead light. “You cannot tempt me with what has been lost.” 

“Damn it,” Bail swears under his breath, and he hurries forward, kneels, tries to fit as many fingers as he can underneath the collar, into the binders on Obi-Wan’s mangled wrists, searching for a catch, a release, something. “Let me get these off of you – ” 

“What for?” Obi-Wan jerks upright, and he is a horrific vision, blood caked on his face and tears standing in his eyes. “Do you plan to destroy another planet, just so I will feel it?” 

Bail stares, completely nonplussed. 

“Two billion is already too many,” Obi-Wan mumbles, and his unfocused gaze slides away from Bail’s as he sags sideways, ready to fall again. “I lost count. A few more will not make any difference.” 

“Obi-Wan,” Bail pleads, hauling Obi-Wan’s shoulders towards him, trying to keep in his wandering line of sight. “I swear to you, it’s me – ” 

“It is not,” Obi-Wan whispers. “I felt your passing.” 

“What you felt was Alderaan – ” 

“Alderaan is gone!” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Bail shouts, and he shakes Obi-Wan harder than he ever would have thought himself capable, unable to contain himself, unable any longer to pretend he is not destroyed by it. “Yes, it is!” 

Obi-Wan stares at him, wide-eyed, as Bail slumps back onto his heels, exhausted by his confession, by the weight of reality. 

“Breha is gone, Obi-Wan,” he mumbles. “And I need – Leia said – Leia is safe, she’s with the fleet, I think – I think she’s with Luke – but I need – ” 

He takes a deep breath, looks at the floor, at the edges of Obi-Wan’s tattered, bloodstained leathers. “Leia said you could see ghosts, because she could too, and if there’s – if there’s even the _slightest_ chance that she’s anywhere, that she’s still with us, I need you to tell me. I need you to come back and find her – ” 

Obi-Wan moves so fast that Bail is actually startled by it – he presses a kiss to Bail’s cheek, is shaking, is twisting within his bonds. “Get them off,” he chokes. “Off, Bail, get them off _now –_ ” 

Bail gulps, fumbles inside his tunic for Obi-Wan’s lightsaber with one hand while clutching every part of Obi-Wan he can reach as close to him as he can; the humming of the illuminated blade is almost unbearably loud, and it snaps the binders with the merest touch, letting Obi-Wan sweep his arms around Bail's shoulders. 

They are mouth-to-mouth, desperately, when the collar falls from Obi-Wan’s neck, and so Bail feels it, too – the rush of an indescribable, exquisitely-tempered power, surging through flesh and mind alike, blazing with light. Obi-Wan coughs, tears himself away, moans and shakes at the strength of it with his face in Bail’s neck, his hands clutching at nothing until Bail grabs them into his own.  

“Bail,” he rasps, eventually, and when he looks up again his eyes are _luminescent_ , utterly alien, as though he has been anointed an oracle. “Can you see them?” 

“See what?” 

“They’re everywhere,” Obi-Wan breathes, and his chapped lips break into a smile, wondering, wistful. “I can see them all.” 

He stands, suddenly, swift and assured, as though he had never been hurt, and pulls Bail up to stand with him. “You didn’t come alone,” he says as he glances upwards, still with that strange, shining expression, though frowning slightly. 

“No, I brought – I brought Cody and Rex.” 

“And _he_ is here,” Obi-Wan adds, with a small sigh, though it is one of acceptance, not resignation. “We come to it at last.” 

His kiss for Bail is long and sweet, and makes Bail think, briefly, absurdly, of what could have been – what he had always wanted, and seemed so unlikely ever to have. 

“Don’t be afraid, Bail,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “Breha wasn’t.” 

In an instant, his lightsaber has left Bail’s hand, and then he leaves Bail’s arms, too; he is running down the length of the prison, darting in and out of patches of light, and it is all Bail can do to stare – until he gets his wits back about him, and starts off in hot pursuit, cursing Jedi reflexes for all he’s worth under his breath. 

Cody and Rex are waiting for him at the top of the stairs, half-standing as though something has startled them out of their battle readiness. “Was that – ” Cody blurts as Bail rushes by, and Bail can only shout back a brief, confused affirmation as he hurtles across the main hall, and comes to a frustrated, rambling halt, as he realizes Obi-Wan is nowhere in sight. 

“What the fuck, sir?” Rex says, jogging to his shoulder. 

“Vader’s here, or so he said,” Bail pants. “Damn it, I don’t know where they are – !” 

“Well wherever they are is where we are _not_ going,” Cody says sternly. “We’re here to protect you, sir, and I dunno about Rex, but I’m pretty sure taking potshots at a Sith isn’t going to get us anywhere.” 

“Like _hell_!” 

They are interrupted by a sound Cody and Rex probably haven’t heard before, but which instantly sends a chill down Bail’s back – a wheezing, hissing exhalation, the hum of a lightsaber that is definitely not Obi-Wan’s, guttering and sizzling. When Rex turns and raises his blaster, it is torn from his hands, flying off into the darkness; Cody hurls backwards entirely, landing in a heap, all the breath driven from him, and cannot seem to get up as Vader stands in the wreckage of what was once a monumental statue of a past Jedi Master, hulking and still, and simply watches them. 

“Has your champion deserted you, Senator?” he intones. When he takes a step forward, there is something strange in his gait – a lurch, the smell of burnt flesh, something which makes Bail think that he is even less whole than before. “How very ungrateful of him.” 

“Who am I supposed to thank, Darth?” 

Obi-Wan’s voice is terrifyingly loud, resonating and bouncing around every wall of the Temple; where he is speaking from, Bail cannot guess.  

“Did you think I would be glad of the lessons your cruelty taught me?” he continues, and Rex is actually cupping at his ears, grimacing, as the din grows even louder – the captain’s hands are shaking as he tries to arm a grenade and it is all he can do to soundlessly curse at the little device’s apparent disarmament at Vader’s command.  

“The deal you offered – of peace in our time enacted by your armies, and a new Order under my supervision, breeding a new generation of minds for you to manipulate – did you think I would allow such a transgression against everything the Force represents? Did you think I would forgive you the destruction of everything I have ever loved? 

“After all,” Obi-Wan says, stepping out of the shadows behind Vader – and it is only himself, now, only his quiet, calm voice, without the weight of thousands of absent Jedi lending him the power to shock and amaze – “you didn’t.” 

Vader’s snarl as he turns is primal and furious, and the clash of a blue blade against his red one is shocking in its power: Bail stares, open-mouthed, for the briefest of instants before he is seized from behind, arms strong around his waist, dragging him towards the Temple doors. 

“Oh no you don’t,” he protests, struggling to rip free of Cody’s grasp, but he is of course unsuccessful – and with Rex joining in the effort, he is bundled along with increasing force, farther and farther away from the whirling spectacle of battle which is being played out under the fallen columns. “Damn it all, let go of me!” 

“Your selfishness intrigues me, Obi-Wan,” Vader is hissing as he hurls his saber – Bail was right, it is easy to see now, as Obi-Wan presses him back, that he is wounded; in the effort to kill the Emperor, no doubt, and the euphoria of that thought nearly shocks Bail into quiescence as Rex and Cody continue to shove him along. “Do you intend to renew the Jedi on the foundations of such rank hypocrisy?” 

Bail stumbles to a halt, suddenly, nearly running into the back of Cody and Rex; the great doors they had been lurching towards are closing of their own (or rather of the dark side’s) accord, creaking and groaning, and this time Rex’s swearing is completely audible as it becomes clear they will not make it out of the Temple in time. He grabs Bail again, pushes the three of them towards a blaster-scorched pillar, as though hiding behind it will protect them from anything. 

“You think me motivated by something so basic as revenge?” Obi-Wan leaps, goes sailing over Vader’s head, twisting elegantly away from his seeking blade. “That I would recreate what was lost just to spite you?” 

“It has crossed my mind, failed master of mine,” Vader roars. His lightsaber comes spinning through the air, missing a bending Obi-Wan by mere inches before it returns to his glove.  

 _Justice_ , Bail thinks to himself. The hall seems very quiet, suddenly – retreating into himself, the outside world hushes and dims. He wants to stand; wants, for the first time in what feels like a very, very long time, to speak for himself and mean it.

“Justice,” he says out loud, and he does stand from where Rex and Cody have kept him crouched; evading their quick, clutching hands, he steps out into the wreckage and falling dust, looks at Vader, takes several long steps forward. This he has been trained for, the ceremony, the drama of it: the ritual of greeting a friend or an enemy, extending a hand or keeping it resolutely close to his chest. He has known since his childhood how to make speeches, how to force demands, how to state the truth and let its consequences fall where they may. 

“He fights for justice, Lord Vader,” he calls. “On behalf of two billion innocents vaporized, countless millions more murdered in wars not of their making at the whim of one being beyond saving and another who did not want to be.” 

“Don’t stop there,” Vader growls. Behind him, Obi-Wan stands en garde, his eyes seeking Bail out and holding his gaze steadily. “Is that all? I refuse to be drawn into the enumeration of my sins, Senator. I know that I will always be denied the chance to account for them.” 

“For my wife,” Bail says simply. “And for yours. Is that not enough?” 

There is a moment of what feels like pure silence – it is comforting, almost, Bail thinks, to be this still, to stand here with all his secrets finally shed, all of his past reinforcing what he can only hope will be his future, and Obi-Wan looking at him, smiling, agreeing with every word and loving him.  

And then Vader’s snarl of rage bursts forth, and he barrels forward, and Bail wants to leap back, but he can only stumble in the face of this horrifying, deathly apparition –  

– until a blinding bolt of blue forces its way through the black chest, and Vader staggers, and then –  

The wind that engulfs them has the force of a typhoon, of a mountain storm Bail had once experienced whipping off the waves of the lake surrounding Aldera, sparking with electric and solar flares. He can do nothing but crouch and huddle away from its force – it is as though darkness itself is tearing at him and his clothes, scuttling over him with rabid, sharp talons, seeking to carry him away into nothingness. 

It dwindles – it fades, its shrieks become tinny and weak. By the time it subsides completely, and there is only the quick stamp of Cody and Rex’s footsteps echoing behind him, all that is left is Obi-Wan, kneeling, the great, empty husk that was Vader half-cradled in his arms. 

* 

It takes a few days, in the end, to discover exactly what had happened – from Mon Mothma, from various highly-placed Imperial commanders who have been imprisoned and are eager to trade information for their safety, from Alliance soldiers on the planet’s surface. Vader’s deadly quarrel with the Emperor, it seems, was private, but its consequences were profound, as the Army and the fleet split their loyalties: Tarkin had returned to attempt to defeat Vader and take power in his own right and the Emperor’s name, while a substantial portion of the fleet instead deserted a devastated Chandrila and returned to serve Vader only to run straight into the Rebel fleet in Coruscant’s atmosphere. There are almost certainly Imperial Star Destroyers still patrolling the galaxy, if not planning a final last stand; the Alliance has lost several ships, enough that it makes Bail heartsick to look up into the skies above the Temple and see, with his naked eye, the floating fields of debris. It will take a long, careful time to consolidate their resources and make the galaxy secure in their own image, but this victory is, at least, a start. 

The Death Star is gone – as are dozens and dozens of pilots and their small, vulnerable fighters. There is no news, as yet, of the _Millennium Falcon_ , nor of the identity of whoever it was who finally made the crucial torpedo shot; somehow, Bail doubts that they are dead, but also never expects to see the two teenagers and their watchful Wookiee guardian again. 

Obi-Wan tells him a little of what he heard and learned of Vader’s plans during his captivity, but not quite enough for Bail to understand. It has something to do with ancient Sith laws which Vader wanted to break; a muddled conception of the meaning of peace and order, a fatal assumption that the power the dark lord knew was untouchable, and could meaningfully corrupt – or even in his mind, improve and uplift – that which had previously been out of reach.  

“It’s a great pity,” Obi-Wan says once, “that he placed so little faith, in the end, in the emotions he believed in the most.” When Bail looks at him quizzically, his first answer is merely a shrug. “He loved so deeply. That he felt betrayed by it is perhaps the greatest misfortune the galaxy has ever experienced.” 

The first thing Bail wants, and the first thing he gets, is to see his little girl. It takes hours, in the chaos, for him to secure a shuttle that can take him back to the fleet – when he does, and he, Obi-Wan, Rex, and Cody have made their way, exhausted, through the wreckage of listing, burning ships to the one where what little family they have is waiting, it is to find Leia and Luke together in one of the state rooms deep in the bowels of the ship, running in circles around each other, screeching the noises of X-wings on a strafing run and booming explosions. She leaps upon each of them in turn, breathlessly happy as she swings around Bail’s neck, as Rex and Cody allow themselves to be tackled to the ground under her flailing limbs. When she joins Luke in embracing Obi-Wan, it is with a suspicious, intense glare which no doubt means that she has no intention of letting Luke monopolize _her_ friend’s attention. 

Padme remains apart from them, her hands folded in her lap, and only smiles when Bail comes to sit by her. She is as beautiful as ever, even in the rudimentary uniform of the Alliance, with the patch of her affiliation to Mon Mothma’s staff on her chest; she has not forgotten, or at least has not unlearned, the straightness of bearing which makes Bail think instantly of Breha, of the art and duty of queenship. 

“How are you?” he asks, gently. 

“I don’t know,” she murmurs back, and seems to be telling the truth as she watches Luke shyly interrogating Cody and Rex about their makeshift armor and weapons. “Stormtroopers came to Mos Eisley,” she adds, quieter. “I thought Luke might be safer if I took him to the Wastes, or even off-planet, so I left Chandrila to find him, and – ” 

Her head lowers, numbly, as though unwilling to catalogue one more injustice. “I’ve tried to contact Owen and Beru. There is no answer from the farm.” 

Bail reaches across, covers one of her hands with his. “Will you stay with us? Once we have found a place. The Alderaanian diaspora will find a new home, somewhere. In the meantime…” 

She looks up at him with such hope that it feels like a new renewal, like this dream they are suddenly living will continue – or, rather, confirmation that the nightmare has ended. “Yes,” she breathes. “Thank you.” 

It is a hectic week, one in which Mon Mothma runs herself ragged, and Bail hardly less so – finally given an agenda, even if it is more militaristic than anything he has ever had to deal with, he sets to his tasks with an enthusiasm which keeps him busy, at least, even if it does not help in furthering his happiness. There are refugees by the million to take care of on Chandrila; there are the clamors of millions more Coruscanti citizens anxious for guarantees that their property will be secured or indemnified against further conflict, as the many levels of the underworld under their feet continue to take a seething, roiling advantage of the general chaos, the black markets, the backhanded deals. Eventually, Mon Mothma descends to the planet’s surface to establish a temporary legislative home for those politicians who have remained in the Senate Apartment Complex and leaves Bail, Rex, and Cody in the atmosphere to continue resupplying the fleet and dispatching it to where it is needed the most; and this work is so all-consuming that it is nearly two days before Bail realizes, in between falling half-asleep into a requisitioned bed and getting up again a few hours later, that he has not seen Obi-Wan for too long. 

It is not hard to guess where he might be, however, and so when he is flown down to the Temple – in broad daylight, and it is incredible what a difference a little sunlight makes to the glittering expanse of buildings below in terms of thinking they can be salvaged – Bail ascends the steps slowly, contemplating just how, perhaps, the great edifice is to be saved. 

There are plants growing in the cracks of the stairs, he is surprised to notice; he hadn’t seen them before in his and the clones’ mad rush the last time they were here, which is no great shock. But as he reaches the doors, he sees that they are not the only newcomers – the stone and metal of the entire building seems thick with budding, creeping vines, tiny leaves and tough little flowers turning their heads towards the sun. And inside, more miracles: though Bail had known, and indeed had visited, the many ornamental gardens the Order had kept within their midst, he has never seen trees in the main hall, their fresh roots forcing their way out of crevasses and finding their way along dulled masonry, winding their way around the disintegrating columns. When he pauses and listens, Bail almost fancies that he can hear them growing. 

Obi-Wan is sitting in the midst of it all, in a simple shirt and a thick, familiar brown Jedi cloak, cross-legged, his lightsaber hilt by his side. His hands are pressed to the ground as Bail approaches, his eyes closed – and upon his face, an expression of such peace that Bail is almost sorry to disturb him. 

“Come in,” Obi-Wan murmurs, forestalling Bail’s guilt, and opens his eyes with a sigh. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” 

“Indeed,” Bail confesses, settling next to Obi-Wan and looking up, marveling, at the canopy of leaves that is reaching up towards the cavernous hole in the roof that, for five years, has let in the elements, ruining the carpets and fading the hanging, half-burnt tapestries. “How has this happened?” 

“I have come to believe that the Force’s one true impulse is to create and preserve life,” Obi-Wan says, smiling as he cranes his head back. “It has been sorely tested of late. It lost trillions of life forms, and Master Yoda, upon the destruction of Dagobah – billions more with Alderaan. This is just the beginning of its recovery, and it is – I can’t describe what it feels like, to be a part of its work.” 

Bail picks up one of Obi-Wan’s hands, interlaces their fingers, luxuriates for a moment – because he can – in the fact that they can take this moment for themselves. “And you? What will be your next task?” 

“My path is unclear,” Obi-Wan says, his gaze wandering over things that, Bail thinks, are invisible to anyone else’s eyes. “All I know is that I am not alone, and that when I am ready, so will they be.” 

Bail turns and looks despite himself, searches in vain for – he doesn’t even know what. A ghostly, misty figure? A shimmering cloud of light? “‘They’?” 

“Thousands upon thousands,” Obi-Wan smiles.  

“And the children? You seemed so sure of their ability.” 

“I am. But I find myself unwilling, at long last, to concede the necessity of settling the greater weight of the universe on the shoulders of infants.” The shake of Obi-Wan’s head is small, but carries great sadness. “I do not speak only of Leia and Luke. Han, and Lando – the orphans our wars have created, the deaths and bereavements I have seen. We must do better, Bail.” 

“You suffered that injustice yourself – that burden.” 

“Which lends me all the more authority in this matter. I am in the unique position of being able to rewrite our rules, after all.” 

Bail nods, looks down at their hands, at the lightsaber, lying so innocently, at Obi-Wan’s side. “What did you do with – ?” 

“I built him a pyre,” Obi-Wan murmurs, his gaze lowering. “I can only hope it served as some sort of release.” 

“You still care?” Bail asks, surprised. “Not that I expected you to be comfortable with what happened, but I would never expect you to doubt your decision.” 

“I do not.” 

“And so?” 

Obi-Wan turns to him, lays a hand on his shoulder. “He was my son and my brother,” he says simply. “I killed him twice over, after he had been bereaved, and he never met his children. Even after it is weighed against the murders he committed and found wanting his soul will wander dark paths, and I can do nothing to help him.” 

“Do you _want_ to?” 

Obi-Wan does not answer, and so they sit in silence for a while longer. It is nearly sunset, and a breeze is shaking the burgeoning leaves around them, turning them yellow and gold, when Obi-Wan finally sighs and stands, offering a hand to Bail. 

“Shall we set to our work, Senator?” he asks. 

“You won’t be able to call me that soon,” Bail says, shaking his head, as he is pulled to his feet. “Beyond the legal entanglements of whether the Imperial or Galactic Senates even continue to exist, I highly doubt the title will carry much weight in this new order of ours – and there is the matter of the governorship of New Alderaan to consider, of course – ” 

Obi-Wan interrupts him with a kiss, warm and inviting; he is dappled and bright-haired in the brightening Temple, as though the air itself has been rejuvenated by his presence. 

“I shall call you my lover, then,” he smiles, one hand on Bail’s cheek, “and be satisfied.” 

 _Good enough for me_ , Bail thinks, as he is drawn out into the sun. 

_More than good enough._

**FIN**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for all your comments, guys. I can't say how much I've enjoyed writing this fic for you all. <3
> 
> Fanmix going up imminently...


	11. Chapter 11

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Listen [here](http://8tracks.com/commonplacecaz/he-most-happy-who-such-one-loves-best).

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